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← Return to Tapering off of Prednisone
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I am on 15mg prednisone for PMR (since 6/27) and wanted to go down to 12 or 11.5. I'm pretty sure my doctor wants me to drop to 10. It seems like a pretty big drop. Should I ask for a blood test if he requests this? I found a schedule:
Treatment duration and tapering of corticosteroids
Reduce dose to 12.5 mg/day for 2 – 4 weeks, then;
Reduce dose to 10 mg/day for 4 – 6 weeks, then;
Reduce dose by 1 mg every 1 – 2 months or 2.5 mg every 3 – 4 months until discontinuation (depending on symptoms)
This may be the schedule he's using and why he said it would only last 6 months. No bloodwork has been done since I was diagnosed. And no, I don't have a Rheumatologist and being in a very small town, no access to one.
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@vellen, My rheumatologist gave me tapering suggestions but never told me specific amounts or times to drop to a lower dose of prednisone. Instead he had me keep a daily log of my pain level when I got up in the morning and the dose that I was taking each day. Then he said to only taper down if my pain level was acceptable to me when I got up in the morning. For me that was a 1 or 2 on a scale of 0 to 10. If my pain level was higher than 2 I would bump my dosage up half of the previous amount that I dropped on the last taper to see if the pain went down the next day. When I got to 1 mg, it took me six months of going back and forth between 1 mg and 1/2 mg before I could finally stop taking prednisone and wake up with pain less than a 2.