Trying to reduce prednisalone

Hi Carol, sorry you are having such a time of it.  I am relatively new here but someone will be along soon to advise and support you and give you information.  They are a great bunch of people in this forum and they will keep you right.  Hang on in there and good luck.    Pat

Morning carol, what a bugger! This is just what I did. Last October I dropped from 9 to 8 and by the second day I knew that things weren't right. As you said the first ugly pain to reappear was the pain in my neck that spread to my right shoulder, then the pain in my hips and upper arms. I gave the pain a good 14 days to see if it would go but it didn't so I upped it back up to 9 again and within two days most of the pain had gone or was going. When all the pain reappeared it was by no means as bad as pre diagnosis but it was still there niggleing me. I gave it 2 weeks at the 9 then attempted to reduce again this time 1 day 9, 1 day 8. Again after about 4 days the pain creeped back so this time after only 1 week I upped my dose back up to 10 so that it really got a grip on the inflammation. I stayed on 10 for 6 weeks and I've only just this week reduced down from 10 to 9.5, so I'm cutting my 5 mg tablet in half and making up the difference with 1 mgs. So far I'm ok. What ever you decide to do I do suggest that if you do up your medication stay on that upped dose for a good month to 6 weeks so that it really stamps on the inflammation. Hopefully Eileen will offer advise soon. Christina

carol i  went down a quater  at a time  and it seems to work for me,   even tho  my doc says a quater   wont make a differance,   but i prefer to stick with  those  who  know  because they have been succesful,  with  a slow  drop.   tho i have  just gone  down to 1 1/2    he says i  should  be off the  pred in a month.  but   but no way   i will stick to my regime,  and  will be  off  sometime in april   fingers x

It's difficult to say but it sounds as if the underlying autoimmune disorder is still quite active and you were maybe just on the border of enough pred to control the inflammation it is causing. I have had 1/2mg make a difference so yes, 1mg can be enough to allow symptoms back. 

The other thing could be steroid withdrawal pain - that usually starts immediately you have reduced the dose and improves over the following week or so. Flare pain will get worse as time goes on. I was never able to reduce 1mg at a time going from every day one dose to every day new dose simply overnight, That is the reason I worked out the "dead slow and nearly stop" reduction which is described in posts 4 and 5 of this thread:

https://patient.info/forums/discuss/pmr-gca-and-other-website-addresses-35316

The first post has links to other useful sites where you will find more info. The reduction scheme is very slow and fools the body into not noticing the reduction! It has worked for a lot of people. We used to think that it was only at lower doses this was a problem, when the percentage drops were higher. Now we realise a lot of people end up yoyoing on their pred dose at higher doses because of this pain - whether it is a flare of steroid withdrawal doesn't appear to matter - this helps avoid the pain. 

Cocodamol rarely does much for PMR pain and it is a shame to let the inflammation get to entrenched - but I imagine there is no chance of getting the blood test brought forward, especially since it is Friday.