Day 3 on pred; still 12+ poops

I'm still waiting for good results after my 3rd day of prednisone (40mg daily) plus my usual lialda and rowasa (enema is very hard to retain now). I am still pooping way too much (around a dozen watery bms a day or more) and blood is present in some, but not all, of them. There was 'a lot of' inflammation, according to my GI, when he scoped me this past Tuesday and it had spread upward (possibly beyond the sigmoid). The flexible-scope experience itself was quite painful at times.

I've seen maybe a slight improvement since starting the pred as some of the random and sharp abdominal pain is mostly gone, and I haven't been going more than once an an hour. I was hoping for quicker results as I've been feeling miserable. Mostly, the pred makes it harder to fall asleep, and stay asleep which is quite fun.

So tired and frustrated by all of this pooping...

Have you been on pred much before this? I've found it to take longer to control my symptoms each time I go on it! This is my 9th time on Pred in 18 months and it takes over a week to kick in now whereas when I first started taking it it used to work almost immediately! I think your body just gets immune to its effects after too much use. I now stay on the 40mg starting dose for two weeks before tapering by 5mg weekly.

Are you taking the pred all at once in the morning or in two sep doses? If you take it all at once it may help with your insomnia. I also found it worked a little better for me taking it all at once. Others though do better splitting the dose. Just an idea. Give it that full week. Three days really isn't that long and you are seeing improvement. Once it helps more you should be able to retain the Rowasa better. You could also just use half the enema and then do the other half after you've gone to the bathroom. Really try to breathe through the feeling of needing to go every extra minute in there helps.

Hope you start doing better.

My GI had me split mine over the day. When I was on 40mg, I took 10mg at breakfast, 10mg at lunch, 10mg at dinner, and 10mg at bedtime. When I dropped to 30mg, I dropped the bedtime dose, and so on and so forth. So when I was on 10mg I took all 10mg with breakfast.

If I remember correctly, he had me do that because he felt it was less suppressive to my adrenal glands, as most of the cortisol is released in the morning. So not getting a big dose all at once would keep them from being so suppressed.

I also divided the daily dose of 40 mg as Fruitgirl described. While taking it I kept to a low-residue diet that helped reduce the no. of bms each day. Have you tried that? Rest helped me, too; even if I wasn't sleeping, lying flat on my back slowed ye olde colon so I kicked back & read or listened to soothing music as much as possible. IMHO the med works more effectively when physiological stress on the body gets lowered or eliminated, at least for 1-3 months. / Old Hat (32 yrs with left-sided UC; presently in remission taking brandname Colazal)