suchatravesty said...
IF your GI isn't receptive to these questions and information about symptoms, then you need a new GI.
^^^^^This,
And
Suppositories are only good to maybe 15 cm -ish. I would ask about
a nightly 4 gram/60ml mesalamine enema which can reach most of the descending colon. It's a breeze at bedtime. Roll onto left side, put in, drift off to sleep... done.
I was originally told that mesalamine takes up to 3 weeks to start working. Not sure how long you have been taking it. The mesalamine will replace the prednisone as the anti-inflammatory keeping you in remission.
Here's how I see it, based on my experience. You only taper as fast as the symptoms allow, not on an arbitrary schedule. If you have to be on a dose for two weeks instead of 1, so be it. Or if you can only drop by 2.5 then do it. I've been at 40 for as long as 18 or 19 days before starting to taper and still weaned off OK.There are times that I started going down by 2.5 after I reached 15 mg, and that was OK too. There were other times when I tapered too aggressively and symptoms returned and I had to go back up and start over.
It's a balancing act, prednisone is pretty toxic, especially if you take for a long time, so the quicker the taper the better, but you also need to stay in remission.