I have decided to document with pics of how my pred taper from 5mg to 2.5mg then to finished. I thought it might be of interest to some of you, but what do I know.
I will be posting a pic of my knees, every week, or when there are changes in them. My knees are always first to swell and act up when meds are not working, then my hands will follow shortly after. But I am going to only keep track of my knees as they are a little easier to take a picture of, than my hands. I mean you need hands to take pictures of your hands
Anyways... each picture will have a date on them to show when the pic(s) were took, because I will forget when they got took, and then what would be the use to keeping track of it?
Below are the pictures for the starting point of my pred taper.
BRB Need to restart to be able to upload pics. And do not want to have to retype this all out again.
Joonie, you are just too cute and funny
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Day 1
Hi Joonie, I know that puffy look and feel above the knee caps! I hope they aren't painful. I'm tapering also, and my very OLD left foot problem has been hurting after 10 years of not being a problem. My hands aren't 'right', either. Don't understand how on earth this can be happening with all of these super meds that I'm taking. I'll phone the doc's office in the morning (if they aren't gone for a week or something!! Every holiday they seem to bail out for a week or two)I really hope you can walk with the swelling in your knees, lol sarah.
Okay, just to clarify things here - these are your knees at their best, before you start tapering the prednisone, right?
Maybe you should use a tape measure too, and do the circumference of each knee to help chart it as well. Hey - this could be a science fair project for your daughter! Remember we were talking about getting a project for her to keep her from being bored? LOL
All joking aside, I hope you don't suffer too much when you taper. Just take it slow and don't throw yourself into a flare.
HillHoney - Yes that is my knees the day after taking the first 2.5mg of pred. I do have pics from a couple of weeks back of my knees from when I was on the pred dose pak and they actually look about the same. AND GOOD IDEA about the measuring tape!! I will look for my sewing measuring tape when I get home tonight and measure them for to keep track of their changes. Oh yeah! She would really love to measure her mommies knees
Hurts - No, my knees do not hurt, they always look like that since a couple of years back when I got so bad off, they never went back to looking not puffy. And as for my hands the same way. I was just trying to say that if the pred taper did not go well it would affect my hands and then I would not be able to take a picture. I really do hope you can taper off the pred without any problems.
Ok I finally found my measuring tape.
I am having some hard swelling in both of my knees, but it is not as bad as it has been in the past. The hard swelling is in the top outter part of my knees. You can see it in the pics.
Day 3 -
My right knee is always first to go. It is beginning to not straighten out all the way.
Oh-oh. Looks like it started already. Joonie, your RA is really to active to fool with. I am worried about you. Please find a 2nd dmard you can tolerate before quitting pred.
Love ya,
M
joonie, Your knees don't look so good I have a fewAngel57 - for some reason my right big toe is numb. It is not that numb, I can still feel when it touches something or something touches it, but it is numb. It has been numb for about 3 weeks (maybe less) now. And I did not even tell my RD about it, because he probably would not have addressed it anyways.
Thanks Joonie! :) I'm so easily confused with knees, because mine just ALWAYS look messed up to me. My knee caps are always hiding. LoL And my legs aren't fat either, it's just the way it is. When I swell, I swell like you said you do, on the outside top rightish kinda area. Sometimes I feel like it's going to push my knee caps in, everything gets so tight. Icky. I've had the toes go numb thing too, I bet it's a pinched nerve. Can you pop your toes? Have not been able to pop my toes since I was oooohhh... 8 years old. I have not been able to pop my knuckles since I was about 9 years old. But other joints I do not want to pop, pop
Would that work?
I they were reacting to the t-storms we are to be getting soon, and that I missed my humira shot, but I took it the next day. But they were better today. I just had a little more stiffness and was kinda hard to move around today, but overall not much pain and did not have to take anything for pain, not even IBU. But I will take some before I go to bed tonight to make sure I can go to sleep tonight. I also feel much more fatigued then I have been feeling, but that is expected.
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Looks like they lost an inch in swelling over night?
Wow Joonie...that looked so very painful to go thru. I hope you feel much better soon.
Not painful at all blessed, just seems that 5mg of pred is not working for me now. Oh well... maybe soon I will have a new RD and onto meds that actually work for me.
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