Coming off of prednisone after surgery

The past year and a half I have been on prednisone (at most 60 MG). There have been multiple times where they have tried taking me off the medication but that just lead to flare ups, fatigue, hospital visits, etc. I have recently had a colectomy and am currently going down on the prednisone again. I am scared that even without my colon, I will spiral downhill and get sick again. Have any of you had a colectomy and had problems coming off of prednisone after surgery? Or do you have any tips or advice on how to keep from spiraling downhill while coming off the prednisone? Should I even be worried that coming off the steroids will make me sick even after surgery?? Thanks.

You won't have any UC symptoms now so I wouldn't worry about UC. But you will have Steroid withdrawal; it's not fun but it does go away.

I went from about 35 mgs per day before my surgery to 20 mgs the day after my surgery and then 3 days later to 10 mgs. I slowly tapered over a couple of months down to 0.

I ended up very tired and my joints hurt. But once I added Sulfasalazine it helped with my joint pains. It's all a distant memory now.

You're better off now that you are not on that high dosage of Pred, it's doing you no good now and you need to get off of it as soon as you can. Predisone is the Devil.

ks1905 said...

Marauder93 said...
Unless you develop pouchitis, you wont have issues coming off of it. In fact, being on it will make you have a harder time recovering from the surgery because it inhibits wound healing. But as you are probably aware, it can take a long time for your body to adjust to a J-pouch, so as you come down you may notice an increase in symptoms, but its probably not because of the pred

Marauder,

From Niks post they only removed the colon (colectomy) so only the incisions need to heal. The pouch was not built, that will probably be at a later date if they choose to have a j-pouch. If someone is on high dosages of Predisone for 18 months then the normal course of action is just to remove (colectomy) in a 3-step surgery and build the j-pouch in the 2nd step. The surgeon probably wants the steroids out of the patient's system before the pouch is built so they can heal better.

Yep, all true, but what I said still stands : p

ks1905 said...
You won't have any UC symptoms now so I wouldn't worry about UC. But you will have Steroid withdrawal; it's not fun but it does go away.

I went from about 35 mgs per day before my surgery to 20 mgs the day after my surgery and then 3 days later to 10 mgs. I slowly tapered over a couple of months down to 0.

I ended up very tired and my joints hurt. But once I added Sulfasalazine it helped with my joint pains. It's all a distant memory now.

You're better off now that you are not on that high dosage of Pred, it's doing you no good now and you need to get off of it as soon as you can. Predisone is the Devil.

Do you have any idea about how long it will take before I am "normal" again after stopping the prednisone? Are you aware of any particular symptoms I should keep a cautious eye out for after stopping?

I tapered pretty slowly after my colectomy, it took me six weeks to get down from 10 mg to 0. Tapering didn't make me sick. By the time I had my second surgery (about 3.5 months later) most of the visible steroid side effects (moon face, excess body hair, belly fat, etc) were gone. I've been off of pred now for almost 2.5 years and except for my bone density (still slightly low) and teeth (not sure exactly but my dentist always comments that they're improving but not back to normal yet) I don't seem to have any residual damage from steroid therapy.