Females: Early menopause or prednisone tapering problem/side effect

I am soooooooooo confused, depressed and in panic. My last period was 22 days late although my periods used to be regular, every 28 days (the only exception is when I start to flare, but only 10 to 15 days late). Usually I have light periods that last only a few days, but with last period   I had   rather heavy bleeding for 7 days. Few days ago, I started to experience hot flashes, sweating, nighttime hot flashes, shift from feeling very hot to feeling chilled . I have disrupted sleep, my sleep is less restful, if I fall asleep I wake up every hour of two. And, of course, mood swings .... Now I taper prednisone 5mg. Next week I will see my doctor. I am worried because my CRP is positive and I don't feel well, my knees are killing me, which, curiously enough, is usually a sign that I am flaring.   I am profoundly sad because I hope that one day I might have a baby. Please help me with any comment, experience, suggestion ...  

vidoska, I would not jump right to menopause, the steroids could be causing some of your problems. I would see a OBGYN though and let them know you want to have a baby. Maybe you and a dr. can come up with a plan. good luck! Karen

I also had cycle problems from prednisone, mine weren't as severe though, possibly because I was also taking birth control pills at the same time.  I'm  pretty sure if it wasn't for that I would have grown even more facial hair than I got, and had my boobs totally disappear, so yay for estrogen in a pill!  I didn't see any of those in your medication list, so it's very likely that you are just having your cycle messed up by the prednisone playing with your hormone balance, and getting some form of estrogen increase (or further prednisone decrease) ought to help with that.  I was all back to normal with the girl stuff and the face hair after about 4 weeks of no prednisone, if that helps.

As far as your symptoms, I have that exact same stuff happen whenever I am on prednisone, with the hot flashes and night sweats (all my clothes get completely soaked!) and difficulty sleeping (hard to sleep when you're wet) and sore/stiff knees.  It also makes my teeth hurt really bad, and when I was on prednisone for 6 weeks straight, it even started to mess up my vision.  After about a week with no prednisone everything was totally fine except I was still sweating a lot, and my eyes didn't quite work right.  That took about 2 more weeks for those things to stop completely, and in the meantime I was just reallllllllly tired from no predinsone.

Hope you feel better soon, and do go see your OB/GYN, they ought to help you feel better woman-wise even sooner :)

I also had similar side affects when tapering from Prednisone. Start documenting your symptoms and I bet you will find a correlation of their onset with your tapering schedule. For me, everything peaked about 2-3 days after I tapered down my dosage.

Good luck and I hope you feel better soon.