I have Polymyalgia but have a particular pain in one hip.

We don't have fibro here - it is polymyalgia rheumatica which has a completely different cause. And bursitis is a common finding.

Could you ask for a hip referral? One side doesn't sound like typical PMR and it sounds as though you don't think it is, either. 

My one sided hip pain turned out to be a hip badly in need of replacing. It changed my life. 

Thanks, I'll find out soon with my physical therapist who is a master of figuring things out. I already saw an orthopedic surgeon who said it was muscle collapse. Said to stop all exercise, do yoga instead, but even gentle yoga is too hard with the poly.

I'd love to know what your therapist reckons the cause to be. Gentle yoga doesn't work for me either, and I walked miles in New York when visiting my son. Muscle collapse wouldn't surprise me! Pred is good but doesn't solve everything, and like Hazel I can feel a slight ache in the leg and thigh areas. We could all do with a Miss Marple, although Eileen is pretty good! 

It depends on the yoga - I did heavily adapted Iyengha yoga with PMR but without pred. It helped mobility - so did Pilates. Both done after an aquafit class done at MY level, not anyone else's!

will keep you posted, thanks!

I saw the physical therapist yesterday who diagnosed me with bursitis and tendonitis, common with pmr, she said, because the weakened muscles cause the hips to sway resulting in the problem.  She gave me a couple of gentle strengthening exercises to do when I can and told me to ice as often as I need--she gave me a nest little ice disc that fits right on my "spot."  Basically she said the long term solution is strengthening the muscles to decrease the inflammation (caused by the weakened muscles).  

I didn't have her do the dry needling or ultrasound yesterday because the eval made me pretty sore, I just wanted to get the heck out of there and she understood.  So at least I know what I am dealing with and can work on resolving it....

PS - some orthopaedic bunnies are not very good at recognising anything not entirely bone related!

Thanks...if it is bursitis (which I've had before in my other hip prior to poly), the physical therapist treated it with dry needling and ultrasound...worked great.  Will let you know what she says next week.

ortho surg did a zillion X-rays, no OA, he said.  I was glad!

I would be very grateful for some more advice about trochanteric bursitis and PMR.

I was diagnosed with PMR two years ago and have been lucky enough to have had quite an easy journey so far, mostly suffering with fatigue but very little pain.

A few weeks ago I had tapered to 5mgs Pred when I experienced aching in my pelvic girdle and fatigue, so increased to Pred to 7.5 and when didn't get relief of pain, in steps to 15mgs.I have been on15mgs for 10days and the fatigue and generalised acheing is now much improved but I have pain in my right hip which wakes me in the night. It is relieved quite quickly with Co-codamol (8/500mgs).I am wondering if I should continue to take the 15mgs Pred for a while longer or start to taper now. I also had a nasty attack of sciatica on the same side a few months ago which was confirmed by a GP.

I have been following this forum for the last 18mths and have found it very helpful and informative. 

I have to say that I feel it would be far better to get your GP to order an x-ray of that hip to be sure it isn't OA or anything like that and try to reduce the oral pred at least back to the 7.5mg level fairly quickly if you can - it's a shame to lose all that progress if you don't need to. It was those sort of symptoms that always heralded a flare for me but by having them dealt with independently of the PMR made a big difference. Trochanteric bursitis usually responds well to a local steroid injection - and that saves increasing the oral dose to levels where you will have more side effects. The reduction to 5mg was obviously just a step too far.

The bursitis and the sciatic problem could well be due to and certainly exaccerbated by a lower back muscle problem - but an x-ray won't show that and most doctors would then tell you "nothing wrong". My usual suggestion is to find a sports physiotherapist or massage therapist - they work miracles for sports persons with muscle problems! 

Thank you so much for your quick reply and helpful advice. I will try to get a quick appt with my GP. I noticed that there is a new sports physiotherapist at our local leisure centre so I will look into that too. Many thanks again.