Was afraid of this happening...

So I was on the 40 mg of prednisone. I decided to go down a bit slower then my doctor wanted me to do. He wanted me to drop from 40mg to 20mg. Now I was just on the 40 mg for 10 days so it wasn't too long. But I did go down to 35 and then to 30mg for a few days each at least.

After being on 20 mg for about 4 days the D had started to kick back in. And I even had a little bit of blood in it last night. Today I went in for blood work that he ordered. Problem is I'm supposed to drop down to 10mg tonight. I like my doctor, he's the only one that has really helped me here since we don't have any good Crohn's doctors in the area. But he's horrible at a good taper.

Trying to decide if I should wait for the blood work to come back, or just call him tomorrow and let him know I'm not doing the best again. Frustrating!

Pred is a "bandaid" med or booster med, it alone will likely not put one into remission, docs generally perscribe it to aid with maintenance meds kicking in or as a short break from symptoms. It's very typical with pred for symptoms to come back once you taper down at some point.

It use to give me a decent short break from some of my symptoms but it completely stopped working for me...and since I'm allergic to maintenance meds I was never able to take any along with pred in order to get to a remission (though I have other CD complications that interfere with finding full remission). That's why I ended up going the natural route (it helps some which is better than nothing at all).

What maintenance meds are you on right now?

I'm on Asacol as a maintenance medication. I realize that perhaps it's getting far time to move on to something else. I've been really lucky over the past 6 years that it usually has held me very well. I'd have a flare up, get put on a taper of pred and be okay for another two years. But this time it's only been 6 months since my last flare.

Sammies, he knows the mg of the tablets I have. Unfortunately he's just a GP so I think that's part of the problem. I have had no luck in finding a decent GI doc here. It's been so frustrating. We are looking at a few new ones right now to get in with. There are NONE that specialize in Crohn's or IBD. Most are pretty ignorant about the disease. My GP I think tries his best, and sadly has been MUCH better then the GI docs I've seen. But I really need a good GI doc.

Thanks pb4, I really appreciate it. I dread having to move on to the other drugs. I got comfy in what was working, but oh well that's the way it goes I guess.

My GI had me tapering 5 mg every 7 days, sometimes I wasn't improving and would taper slower as required!