Prednisone

Well, after taking my 3rd dose this morning, I had my first solid poo in months! Yeah! Still some blood, but making progress!

Anyone else feel a little light-headed on pred?

Are you tracking your bathroom trips? I was on high dose pred for almost a year, (dipping down at times, but going right back up) but I pretty much continued to have urgent accidents and days every week that were rougher with 6 to 8 bathroom trips. My GI was a little mystified because he felt like my symptoms were worse than my scope indicated. My symptoms would improve on the higher dose, but still bad enough that it would just take me from on the couch can't do anything, to doing life miserably. The tracking helped me see the improvement, but it typically took me more like a week.

No idea why you'd need to go in to discuss a pred taper unless you haven't seen him for a while but I think you just saw him recently for a scope. He should have written the taper plan on your prescription bottle. They are very simple instructions, very easy to give over the phone in 10 seconds.

iPoop said...
Congrats on the solid poop. Only worry about permanent side effects if you've been on pred 1 to 1.5 years or more. Months is fine.

ipoop you can develop osteoporosis in as short as 3 months on pred. Its not common but it can happen. There are no hard and fast rules on the time frame. My first hospital was negligent and did not do a dexa scan in 18 months of continuous pred use. When i changed hospital they did a scan immediately. Result - severe osteoporosis. If they would have scanned sooner it likely would not have become severe because
we could have started treatment sooner. That is why I make such a point of pointing this out on this forum. I never took doses higher than 30mg (and in total i only spent 4 weeks on 30mg) and the vast majority of that time was at 5-15mg. Apart from the permanent side effect I had extreme migraines (double vision, numbness down half my face, blue auras) when I was at doses 20-30mg and for my body mass I'm pretty certain 50mg would be unsafe.

in my opinion, 1 to 1.5 MINUTES on pred is too much -

you wanna go 1 to 1.5 years or more ? good luck with that -

use if you absolutely need it - otherwise look at other options first -

TT

Finally got my taper schedule. One week at 35mg, next week at 30mg, then 25mg, etc. 8 weeks to taper. If I'm back to my normal at that point, we're good. Else, looks like I'm trying Entyvio or that new trial he offered me.

Thanks, Sara.