Tapered prednisolone to 0... Having problems

I'm 22 and I just finished my first course of prednisolone, the course lasted 6 weeks, starting at 40mg and tapering by 5mg each week. This not only worked incredibly well and made me feel immediately so much better (and unlike a lot of people's experiences with prednisolone that feeling has lasted for the entire 2 months) and I was even lucky in that I got very few negative side effects. My doctor told me that 15mg was the 'danger zone' in which symptoms might start to return, and I got past that fine.

But I recently went down from 5mg to 0 and quite soon had terrible muscle aches, headaches and more frequent and uncomfortable BMs. I was told that a reaction like this was normal and should be temporary. Sure enough, the muscleaches and headaches went away within a couple of days, and for most of yesterday and today I felt completely fine... Until this evening, when I'm suddenly off to the toilet repeatedly with blood and improperly formed BMs, which I haven't had at all since before the prednisolone.

Some people are saying that a 'rebound flare' is common and can last just a few days, while others say that in the event of any re-occurrence like this you should up the dosage again and taper again. Annoyingly I was only given 5mg pills so there was no option to go down to 2.5mg or similar.

..I'm feeling pretty frightened and I'm not sure what to do as my family is asleep and I can't phone my local hospital's flareup hotline at night. I was in such a bad condition before I started the prednisolone that I was losing weight rapidly, I had no appetite at all and could hardly move around, I absolutely don't want to have to go back to living like that. I'm told that to avoid long term side effects I'll be moving onto immunosuppressants if I have to go on prednisolone again this year, another intimidating prospect.

Has anyone else had troubles right at the end of their taper? Were they temporary or were you right back to where you started? Any advice on how to proceed?
I could ask to extend the course and taper more slowly this time, or I could do that and move right on to the suppressants, or I could wait and see if this is only a temporary re-occurrence of symptoms and hope that my body adjusts soon.

some people have to taper more than once, and taper more slowly (pills can be cut in half). but some people become dependent on a 10-15 mg dose.

what is the med that is supposed to control the UC after the taper? if there is/was not other med, you are almost guaranteed to flare up again. pred does not treat - it only suspends.

there may be room for a little more Pentasa

Uc symptoms returning after tapering off of prednisone means one of two things: You tappered off to fast. You are prednisone-dependent (without prednisone your uc symptoms return). 4,000mgs of pentasa a day is good. Do you also take an enema daily (pentasa enema, rowasa enema, or meslamine enema)? If that combination doesn't work than it's time for immunosuppressive medications (Imuran, 6mp, aza).

You were on prednisone only 6 weeks, I reread your original post. In that situation, tapering too fast isn't an issue, most likely. I was prednisone-dependent for a while, it happens, and stronger uc medications is the resolution.

Unfortunately I do very badly with enemas. The mesalamine ones I can't hold in for long and I find uncomfortable when in remission or even painful when flaring, and when I have to have sigmoidoscopies the preparatory enema is excruciating for me. Suppositories might be okay though.

Update:
Very confused, I can't tell if I'm getting better or worse... After an awful sunday morning the rest of sunday was fine, this morning I had some partially-formed BMs (an improvement over D, to be sure) but still had to go frequently.
Most frightening is that during those mornings when I was feeling unwell my appetite started to falter again, not being able to eat is what made my last flare hellish, so that was a scare.
I really can't tell if I should wait and hope that I am improving or just assume that it will get worse and act to prevent it.