Each time I try to reduce my prednisone dosage ( even with small 1/2 mg decreases) I feel my mood become depressed. Is this a typical side effect of the weaning process ?
I was wondering the same thing -especially around 10mg. I only reduce ~ 1/4mg every 3 weeks or so. I am on 10.5 and was diagnosed DEc 1 2015. Started at 15 and T back up a little in the interim. I am 741/2
It could be - do you reduce from every day one dose to every day the new dose overnight so to speak?
Have you seen this?
https://patient.info/forums/discuss/reducing-pred-dead-slow-and-nearly-stop-method-531439
Some people are very sensitive to changes in dose - this has helped a lot of patients.
Just recently, I thought I could reduce 6 mg to 5 1/2 alternating each day. Oh, no it did not work. I felt the change in my body right away. Increased back and shoulder pain.
Now, I am a "good girl" and use your method ..... dead slow and nearly stop. The only way to go.
Thank you again for the reminder!
I am reducing half mg every 4weeks and am on 13.5mg down from 30mg. For the first 4 days I feel achy in shoulder muscles and feely very short tempered at home! The body then adjusts and I am then ok. Try not to arrange anything that week. Saw rheumy recently and instead of half mg he suggested 1mg using DSNS method o achieve the same result. I was impressed he knew all about it! But couldn't possibly imagine dropping by a mg even though it would be on only one day the first week so think I will stick with my current plan. He said I can do it whichever way suits me best.
I can relate to your problems
been trough that and still are
very hard to go down
i had been of prednisone for 1 month
had to start over now I'm taking 2 ml so far so good
and my moods it's up and down,
some good days some bad its not easy hanging there
I haven't noticed the depression when I reduce. I have noticed that even at 7 mg prednisone I have mood changes, anger, less patience with my misbehaving students. I have to really watch myself. I am struggling with the reducing myself only because there is so, so much stress teaching elementary school 5 days a week, and all the meetings, etc. I keep trying.
Do you cut 1mg with a pill cutter and pick a quarter out of the pieces? I find the tablet tends to split up into bits.
Or you could even do1/2mg using the Dead Slow approach - lots of people do if they are able to cut 1mg tablets.
I totally hear you. My first reduction was from 20mg to 17.5mg and it was pure hell even using the dead slow method.
I was actually suicidal and my rumi stuffed it off.
I now only reduce by 0.5mg and the last 3 weeks my moods are all over the place.
I swear I'm only somewhat normal the 3-4 weeks that i stabalize before i reduce again. I hate how i am i fight for my old personality alot. Prednisone is no fun for me.
Your not alone Mariane
When I got down to 2 mg, I started decreasing bt 1/4 mg every 4 weeks. Currently, at 1 1/2 mg. Because I 've been having some episodes of pain in my back I've decided to stay on this dose for 5 weeks. Also dealing with an unexplained rash. I want to see if blood work next week reveals anything. If all goes well, I'll then reduce to 1 1/4 mg. Believe me it's a real challenge cutting my pills as Medrol only comes in 2 mg doses.
I break the 1mgm pill in half at that line in the middle then use a pill cutter to make quarters. They don't come out perfectly but it basically evens out.
Guess it's a bit hit and miss but there is no other way for a quarter. Thanks.
So do I have that problem, wish I knew how people cut 1 mg successfully, even with the pill snipper!
I've been using .5 mg drop with dead slow for a long time. I'm now at a very low dose so I'm using the .5 for the whole taper, but earlier when I was at a higher dose I would drop by a further .5 mg halfway through the taper, so my new dose became my new old dose, and I had a new new dose. If that makes sense. I used to do this at the point where you have two sessions of two days old dose, and would slide down the next .5 mg the second time. So I never had a day where I dropped by more than .5 mg from the day before, but was able to achieve a full 1 mg drop in a month, recently I started taking six weeks slowing down the taper even more, and now no longer attempting the second .5 halfway through. But I'm at 3 mg for sure, and attempting to get to 2.5 so it's getting harder.
I add reduced to 0 ml for 1 month and i have to start again
I when up to 4ml but I think I'll have to try 5 because shoulders arms legs hips every things is sore 😰
Yes that was also suggested, but while I am able to drop half mg every 4 week at the moment with perseverance the first week, doing the DS method would take me seven weeks. I do know not to be in a hurry. The rheumy originally wanted me to be at 10mg by last June as he wrote me a progeramme and here I am on 13.5!! Never mind eh! The tortoise not the hare.
You don't have to start at 1 day new, 6 days old - it says that in the text. I did that because I was very sensitive to changes, lots of people start at 1 day new, 4 days old. And with DSNS you might be able to manage 1mg at a time over the 7 weeks - I have to, I can't cut the tablets and that was the idea originally, to smooth a 1mg drop.
I used the four day start stop cycle for most of my early tapers. I'm lengthening the time now to the six day one as I'm at a very low dose and probably near my lowest possible dose. I didn't need to start DSNS until I was reducing from 9 to 8, however. I think if you are feeling well at your somewhat higher dose you could do well with the four day cycle. And that takes one month. Also see my other post somewhere in this thread where I described how I could go from .5 to 1 mg drop within same taper period. The current taper I'm on is the first time I've not done this. Hence my struggles with splitting a 5 mg tablet to achieve a 2.5 dose for the taper, and my annoyance that I might end up on 2.5, not a handy 2, for months.