hI ALL, For those of you who have had to struggle, 'taper' off of this powerful 'little' pill, you will understand my happiness at zero preds!
I have been on this steroid for months with people saying 'YOU NEED TO GET OFF OF IT" almost the minute I TOOK it, I had no idea it would take so long and be so hard to do. (I had swelling, stiffness, pain whenever I would reduce) from 15mgs to 12-1/2, then on down! I couldn't believe the tiny little pill was so powerful. Someone suggested I order '1 mg' pills , THANK you, that was very helpful, as I could reduce at a much slower, controlled rate without cutting the 5mgs, into little pieces. Now that I'm off the 'stuff' I plan to make a fuss before EVER going back on Prednisone.
Thanks to all for your help and information, the suggestions from you board members was OH so very helpful. Please read about this drug before you take it, don't stay on any longer than you have to, and if you want to know more about what I'm talking about call up Wikipedia, Lynda
Congrats! I have been stuck at 2.5 mgs for a year! Wonderful Lynda! My Dr never would give me any due to OA and now I can see that as usual she was right. She has though kept me in pain meds as needed.I got there once Hurts. But you know what, when one of those bad flares comes and won't go away.......... you can take handfuls of painkillers but nothing relieves a flare like pred. I am tapered down to 7.5 but still have moonface. Really really hard to taper down. Congratulations !!!!!Although we all have a love/hate relationship with pred, sometimes it is really necessary for us to be on it. When you have ra your body does not make enough corticosteroids on it's own. Those corticosteroids help take care of clearing up inflammation. As we all know, inflammation for us is the enemy.
It is hard to taper off of pred because our bodies want that steroid. I have managed to just get off of pred and so far so good on staying off. I have to credit my meds finally working again that is allowing me to stay off of pred.
A little side note on pred that I just found out and don't remember being mentioned (it could have been I am so foggy sometimes lol). We just had to put Danielle on a month of birth control pills because her period will just not go away. Our doc said that prednisone does decrease the efficacy of birth control pills so she had to have a stronger dose of them. Keep that in mind if you are on pred and using birth control pills.