Prednisone taper - Too quick for proper healing?

Hi everyone,

I am new to the forum as I’ve been recently diagnosed with UC and was looking for some advice. When I was first diagnosed in mid 2014, I was given Lialda (2x/day) and that worked for about a month before I flared. My GI put my on prednisone (40mg) for about 2 months and within a month being off, I flared again.

On my second flare, my GI put me on 4 Lialda per day and that seemed to turn things around albeit very slowly (2 weeks before I saw improvement). Then I got a really bad cold and my symptoms slowly came back. They weren't as bad, but I was stuck with a bad cold and mild flare and going nowhere.

After 5 weeks, I had enough and went to the doctors and he prescribed me an anti-biotic (z-pack) for 5 days. At that point, everything went downhill and my flare was back in full force.

I called my GI and he put me back on prednisone (30mg) and within 3 days, my cold was gone and my symptoms went away. After a week on prednisone, my GI doc told me to taper 5mg every 3 days. I am down to about 15mg/day.

My concern is whether I was on prednisone long enough for everything to properly heal or whether I need to stay on prednisone longer to ensure everything internally has healed so when I get off I won’t flare again. I am still taking 4 Lialda per day, but I am not sure how well this will work once I’m off prednisone in a couple weeks.

Does anyone have any advice on how quickly prednisone heals and whether getting off it sooner makes sense vs. staying on it longer to ensure better healing? I know the Lialda is supposed to take care of things long term, but I want to make sure I've healed enough internally.

Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the response. I agree that I'll need stronger stuff if I flare again, but still wondering about the duration of prednisone. Total time will be just under 1 month and was wondering if that's long enough to heal?

Everybody heals differently. I generally start the pred taper when I have no symptoms. Sometimes you have to do it on your own. My doc once had me taper real fast like that and it made it worse. When I had to go back to a higher dose of pred it wasn't as effective. Good Luck!!