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Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR): Meet others & Share Your Story
Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) | Last Active: Sep 10 12:05pm | Replies (1906)Comment receiving replies
Hello! My rheumatologist recommended the increased/split dosage, after my 2nd 2-day stretch of over-the-top morning pain in 2 weeks. So I did ask, but it was really more "complaining" about the symptoms not getting better. Looking back, I was probably "too patient" before "raising the flag", thinking that, over time, the 15/day dosage could've made the symptoms gradually disappear even though the 20/day did not.
My PCP has not been involved since he referred me to the rheumatologist, although I've been keeping him in the loop on my progress.
To your earlier question, I asked my rheumatologist this morning when I should begin my taper. Since the new dosage (20+10), my symptoms have almost disappeared but not quite, so I asked if I need to wait until "all" symptoms disappear before the taper, or taper ASAP, since they've been almost negligible for 9 days now, but stable. My guess is that, if my shoulders have stayed about the same for 9 days, 2-3 more may not make a difference. I will keep you in the loop on how that goes.
Replies to "Hello! My rheumatologist recommended the increased/split dosage, after my 2nd 2-day stretch of over-the-top morning pain..."
Made it through the weekend and still no recurrence of symptoms, going on almost 2 weeks with the 20 mg in the morning, 10 mg at night. My rheumatologist did recommend Friday that I stay on this dosage for 4 weeks total (~ 2 more weeks) before I try to taper. I think I actually did manage to side-sleep a couple of times this weekend, so I can't feel any better about the state of things now vs 2 weeks ago, when I needed help out of bed. I even pushed a little harder with the yardwork this past weekend and still have had no flare-ups. So fingers crossed that things stay this way for 2 more weeks!
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Hi everyone, I have posted recently as newbee to PMR. I am starting a taper after 3 weeks and hope inflammation doesn’t return with a vengeance. My comment today is more of an observation about the multiple posts I have read in the last 3 weeks. If we assembled a room full of rheumatologists we would not find any single approach to this confounding condition. Taper fast, taper slowly, add methotrexate, no don’t do that, take fosamax, eat healthy, exercise but not strenuously, keep stress to minimum (haha), get enough sleep (another haha), no sugar 😩, no salt 😩. One thing I do know is that talking to others who have this condition is a great source of support. I had coffee the other day with a new friend who has PMR. We both said how nice it was to talk to someone about PMR without their eyes glazing over. Friends and family support is great but they oftentimes just don’t get it (except for my husband who at one point had to lift me out of bed)! Carpe Diem. Liz Ward