After flare back to 10 mg but no improvement

Sorry to hear you are also struggling, it's so depressing to be feeling so rotten after having 4 months of continuing improvement. I'll get a blood test done and see my GP next week, but would welcome advice from the forum. Fingers crossed we'll be through this soon. Jan

Hi Betty, I only had three weeks at 15 then down 1 mg every three weeks. At 10 I was fine but then told to drop to nine, problems started again but my bloods normal, so GP told me to drop again, bad advice, the forum think he is pushing to hard. So I put myself back to 10 hoping to overcome the flare but sadly this hasn't worked.

Thanks, I'll try 12 mg as soon as I have my blood test done on Monday, then reduce very slowly. It's very depressing to feel so rotten after 3 months of good health, so I'll reduce very slowly in future. Jan

I have over the years had your problem, it seems what the doctor tells us the blood tests are, dosen`t suit our pain!  just because the levels are lower dosen`t mean we can drop the dosage how they want us to....that is what I have found, and have told my doctor, I will do the very slow drop according to my pain, not the blood test results....otherwise what is the point.....just to satisfy our doctors,  It`s our pain isn`t it?.....

I will go to 12 mg on Monday after I have a blood test taken, let's hope it does the trick. Jan

Thanks Nick, I'll be another blood test done on Monday. When first diagnosed my CRP level was 106, but this went back to normal very quickly, it will be interesting to see if it's gone up again. I think you idea of going to 12 mg a good one,. I'll do that on Monday after my blood test. Jan

I was reducing by 1 mg every week after about 5 weeks at 15 with complete relief of all symptoms.  My week at 9 saw growing symptoms which continued to worsen as I stretched out the week to nine or ten days.  Fortunately I found this site during a sleepless night, understood that it was safe to go up again (my GP had only said to stop reducing if symptoms returned, nothing about increasing the dose again) and also found the dead slow method.  After a few weeks at 10 where my symptoms resolved to a level I was happy with (never as good as before, but close) I began the dead slow taper, with my doctor's approval.  If I had had to go higher at that time, I would have, but would never reduce as quickly again.  I was lucky to catch the flare before it really took hold. In the long run I believe I have had a lower total pred dose because of the slw taper, even though it does sometimes feel painfully slow.  As Eileen says, it isn't slow if it works!

Thankyou, I've now been back on 10 mg for 4 weeks but as you say, not as well as before. It's obviously a common problem to reduce to quickly below 10. I'll try 12 mgs for a few days to try and get back to a more comfortable state, then very slowly down. It's been a painful reminder that the PMR is still very active and though my GP had patients who have overcome this in 12 months, I'm thinking I'm not going to be one of them. Jan

And we also don't know how many of those recoveries were permanent, or whether they took their pain to another doctor  .  I think I'm very lucky with the doctor who is treating me as right from the beginning she said I would have a lot to say about how the weaning process went.  She also was happy with me at 4 mg back in May and when I went back recently and told her I seemed now to be good at 3 she congratulated me, so her expectations are reasonable, that I could be in this for the long haul, but getting successfully down to a low dose is worthy of celebration.  I've never felt any pressure from her to get off pred asap.  I think even her attitude is helpful.  Just for context, Jancorb, i've been on pred since June 2015.