After my diagnosis in early May, my rheumatologist started me on 20 mg prednisone in the morning, tapering to 15 mg in the morning after that first week. I had a pattern of 2-3 good days followed by 2 awful days (needed my wife to help me out of bed, and I'm only 52) for about a week and half. After I complained that I was making no progress, my rheumatologist increased my dosage to 30 mg a day, splitting the dosage at 20 mg in the morning, 10 mg at night. I had almost instant improvement (little to no pain within a couple of days), and he kept me on that for 4 weeks. I started my taper to 17.5 mg in morning and 7.5 mg at night last Thursday, and aside from a couple of headaches, the symptoms have not returned. If I stay symptom-free for 2 weeks, I'll taper to 15 and 5, for 2 weeks , etc.. until hopefully I make it to zero sometime early next year.

Obviously my experience with this is still very limited, but 60 mg to the highest dosage I've ever heard of. I don't think I've seen mention of anything higher than 40 mg/day on this board. For me, splitting my daily dosage seemed to make a world of difference in my results. I haven't had morning pain since day 1 of the split dosage, about a month ago.

Another thing that I felt like I had to do (which is outside of my comfort zone; I'm generally shy) was call into my medical network's scheduling team every day, about 30 minutes after the lines open, to check for canceled appointments. I was initially scheduled for early July in late April, which I didn't think I could endure at the time, and got my initial rheumatologist appointment moved all the way up to May 9, after calling in every morning for about a week. I got lucky, but I'd not be shy about calling in case someone cancels in front of you, to get in earlier. Maybe you will get lucky too!

Best of luck! I hope the appointment in August (or earlier) gets you the treatment you need!