Yes!! Leg pain flares up when I decrease pred too low. My Rheum also discounts this, but I know that it's all part of it. My left leg aches like I've got blood clots, but I had that checked and no clots.

Me, too - my rib pain (front and back) is ache, not stabbing pain. But also (when it was bad, before pred) started turning into muscle *spasms* that stopped me being able to (for ex.) turn over in bed, or even just lift my head in bed, without moving body parts very slowly, one at a time, with support from other, less-affected body parts. Like:

Support head with hands to turn it on bed (the range of motion of my neck gradually became quite restricted, so driving became treacherous).

Multi-move careful effort to turn over in bed:
- position one arm along torso
- roll onto that arm
- roll forward slightly to release arm behind back; move it back
- support torso and head with other arm to roll onto stomach
- repeat in reverse to get to lie on other side

Getting out of bed was similar. All about supporting torso into upright position using only arms while gradually moving legs down, b'cuz using torso muscles to sit up as usual would lead to spasm in back muscles. Once I got upright, legs could take over if I kept my torso straight and used arms to push off bed onto legs.

This gave me new insight into living with disability!

Thank goddess I had no pain in my legs, and little in my arms.

Eventually even that strategy failed and I couldn't get out of bed. Couldn't get to the phone and my husband, who was up, couldn't hear me yelling for help. *Terrifying.* Ended up throwing myself onto the floor in one wrenching, spasm-filled roll, landing on hands and knees and inching against bed as support into sitting position where I could use legs against bed to push myself into vertical position and walk, very gingerly, to get help. Still, was floored again by spasms going down stairs and collapsed, grabbing banister.

Lost it at that point - just broke down. Trajectory was just worse and worse. Will I end up in a wheelchair? Worse? Where does this end?

Took a muscle relaxant I had left over to tide me over.

Doc gave me pred the next day. Within HOURS I was regaining range of motion and pain leaving. MIRACLE.

I repeat (for the sake of any researchers who may read this) that I (like my mother, whose lower legs turned purple in addition to similar foot/ankle morning stiffness and who was diagnosed with sarcoidosis) had had morning aching stiffness in my feet and ankles for several years before the PMR symptoms appeared and spread over my body, and those lower limb symptoms DISAPPEARED when the rest of my body succumbed - at the very start of my PMR. As if it had been there for along time, woken up, and migrated.

[I will add that about 6 weeks before PMR, I gave myself strain injuries in my back, probably more than once (trying to be a hero). The pred has never totally taken away my back strain pain - I can't lean forward for too long. I still wonder whether strain from muscle overuse "woke something up" that had been there simce at least 2000 -- see below -- and caused it to move and replicate.]

I had also had not-really-diagnosed pain and stiffness in the front of my hips in the year 2000 for some months, which hurt most when getting in and out of my car (doc's best guess at the time: bursitis). That lasted only months and then disappeared. The foot/ankle pain started in the late 2010s and disappeared on May 2020, when my "PMR" began.

For the record/fwiw.