I think the split dose worked the best for me. Approximately 2/3 of my dose in the morning when I woke up and 1/3 of my dose in the evening before going the bed was really good. My overall pain relief and being able to sleep during the night was best when I did it that way. The pain was always there but it was better depending on the way I took prednisone. When things improved, I took my whole prednisone dose in the morning when I woke up.

Much of what I learned about prednisone dosing was because of having uveitis. I told my ophthalmologist that I could "see inflammation" inside my eye. My ophthalmologist would verify the presence of inflammation inside my eye during his exam.

My ophthalmologist would quiz me about how much inflammation there was and whether it was getting worse, better or staying the same. No lab work was done to determine how much inflammation was present. In any case, my ophthalmologist and I were always in agreement and terms of the presence of inflammation inside my eye (uveitis), how much inflammation there was, and whether or not the inflammation was getting better.

I described the inflammation inside my eye as being like fog. Prednisone worked like the sun in the morning causing the fog to dissipate as the day progressed. I would adjust my prednisone dose based on how the fog was clearing. My vision was foggy all day long sometimes depending on my prednisone dose. It really helped me decide how much prednisone was needed to achieve the desired result-remission of uveitis.

When I first started having uveitis, I needed frequent ophthalmology visits about every 3 days until the uveitis improved and eventually stopped. I got so good at starting prednisone and tapering off to achieve remission that my ophthalmology visits were reduced to 2 visits. The first visit was to verify that I had uveitis and the second visit was to confirm remission. Remission of the inflammation inside my eye was described by my ophthalmologist as "clear and quiet."

PMR was a different challenge because I had no way of knowing how much inflammation there was.