← Return to Low Dose Naltrexone and Prednisone for PMR?

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@johnbishop

When my PMR was active, my primary care doc was always asking me about my symptoms and watching for GCA. I think you only have to worry about GCA if you start having any of the symptoms.

"What are the warning signs of temporal arteritis?
The main symptoms are:
-- frequent, severe headaches.
-- pain and tenderness over the temples.
-- jaw pain while eating or talking.
-- vision problems, such as double vision or loss of vision in 1 or both eyes."
--- Temporal arteritis - NHS: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/temporal-arteritis/

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Replies to "When my PMR was active, my primary care doc was always asking me about my symptoms..."

I'm just thinking about all the headaches I had when trigeminal neuralgia was diagnosed. My headaches were "electrical headaches." They were sporadic until they progressed and happened all the time.

Eating, talking, brushing my teeth, a mild breeze on my face were enough to cause a jolt of electrical pain but it was nerve pain. People with trigeminal neuralgia are known to get teeth pulled and root canals because of jaw pain that they think is a tooth ache.

When uveitis was causing eye inflammation along with visual disturbances with the potential for going blind --- I don't know why GCA wasn't ever diagnosed. Fortunately, my ophthalmologist could tell it wasn't GCA by looking inside my eye and he could see my optic nerve. He would tell me often that he didn't see any signs of GCA.

Now I have glaucoma related to prednisone use. My optic nerve is showing some changes from ocular hypertension. My visual fields are okay but not the best so I do cosopt eye drops for that problem. My ophthalmologist wants to keep me off prednisone if at all possible.