Finishing Prednisone Friday and worried | Arthritis Information

I've had about four-five days of next to no pain but I'm on that six day pack and it's done on Friday. I worry about what will happen once I'm off this stuff? What have any of you been prescribed or taken if you responded well to Prednisone? The results will last for a variable amount of time. I have had times where it takes everything down for a month or two and others within a week I am feeling bad again. It really depends on how you body takes it and how active your RA is at the time you take it. I was prescribed sulfersalizine and naperson (I think that's what it was called; an antinflammatory) on the same visit I was prescribed predisone when I was first dx'ed.

In my early days it worked well. That would not help me much now....but it was a good start for me.

As the effects of the predisone wore off the sulfersalizine and antinflammatory started working. I did pretty well. Not quite as well as when I was on the predisone; but it's best if you don't take that stuff too long at a time if possible.

Good Luck!

When I was about to chew my arm off from the pain, I was given two courses of Pred. that worked well until I started to taper. They wouldn't give me any more but gave me neurotin and Bextra instead. That stopped the pain very well. I don't think Bextra is available any more but it's relative, Celebrex is, I think. I'm not sure what your DX is so I don't know if this will work for you too, but it's something that really did the job for me and may be an option for you to consider. I can understand why you're worried. It's so nice to be pain free and you certainly don't want to go back to where you were before. Fortunately, there are many choices out there for you and your doctors to try, so try not to worry too much.

When I was flaring really badly and doing burst-and-tapers, I would have about three to four weeks after the taper was over before the symptoms started coming back. You can see what I've taken in my signature line.

I can tell you that when I was first diagnosed, I started on Plaquenil. After about 8 weeks, it worked really well and I hardly ever needed to take prednisone. It wasn't until we thought I was in remission and I tried to cut back on the Plaquenil that I started having problems. Now that I'm on Enbrel, I find it works as well (so far) as the Plaquenil did when I first started.

I was started on MTX and prednisone immediately. That was 3 1/2 months ago- I'm still on both....but tapering off prednisone
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