How did you cope with the side effects tapering off prednisone?

This is not so much a comment or reply rather an update on a previous reply.

How did I cope coming off of Prednisone? I reacted as I mostly do to something I don't want to do. I gripped and moaned a lot, shed a few tears of frustration. Gave up on my Dr’s recommendation of going down one tablet at a time and went to half a MG down for 2 weeks and then down again until I got to zero. That seemed to work better. Then I moaned and complained some more until it was over. That was four weeks ago, now: Seriously, I tried to keep a positive outlook and tried to remember how bad it was a year before. I gave myself treats, downloaded a few good books on Kindle, read online news and articles, played my favorite computer games, started a crochet project, added collagen supplements to my list of vitamins, and talked to my sister on the phone a lot. Now I am in rehab to rebuild muscles in my legs and try and get back my stability. If you don’t have access to rehab there are a lot of good exercises online to draw on. There’s no one solution fits all, just look after yourself and put yourself first. Not something a lot of us are used to doing.

How much prednisone did you take at the outset?

2 mg seems like a big jump to me. Maybe stick to the 10% of less equation?

50 mg daily

Were you diagnosed with polymyalgia rheumatica or something else? That's a high start dose for PMR and a very quick reduction schedule.

PMR

Apparently there are 2 types of Prednisone patients in PMR, those who are Prednisone Sensitive and achieve faily quick remission and are able to taper to zero within a short time frame and those who are Prednisone Resistant and have a lot more difficulty and constant flares. Im one of the latter. It has been a major struggle, the only way i could get from 25mg to 7.5mg was at a rate of 1.25mg every couple of weeks. I also had to spilt the dose and take a small amout every afternoon as well as early morning. Now 7 months later i am stuck on 6.5mg in the morning and dealing with pain and stiffness every morning until the morning dose kicks in about 3 hrs after taking it. Have started Methotrexate 5mg weekly but not overly optimistic!!

I have had to reduce by 1/2 mg monthly to avoid discontinuation syndrome and rebound pain.

What is discontinuation syndrome? Prednisone withdrawal?
When I tapered to 7.5mg in October from 10mg in September I had diarrhea for10-12 days. December 5 mg and January 4mg no problem minimal pain and stiffness but February 3 mg and again diarrhea after 5 days for 10 days. Rheumatologist says not related to decreasing or prednisone. Anyone else have this problem with decreasing/tapering? Thanks

I have GI issues but they preceded PMR by decades and don't seem related to my pred dose.

I definitely took the slow route - have taken almost 4 years to taper off 20 mg! I was able to taper faster at first but hit a little wall at 3 mg so had to do it slower (and go back up a little, plateau off for a while at 3 mg), and then re-start.

However, I have not had *nearly* the pain levels during tapering that you have. Wondering whether PMR is all there is?