It may be premature yet to say this, but I feel like the taper to 20mg of Hydrocortisone (which is the equivalent of 4 mg of prednisone) is a success.
Here's what I did today; grocery store, pharmacy, craft store, made cookies, did a Valentine's craft and will be making dinner.
I've also maintained some semblance of an exercise routine throughout the taper, which is huge (although a good bit of that was me saying F*ck You to the fatigue, adrenal and muscle pain and exercising anyway).
Nor have I been sleeping much as the toddler has been up at night having problems breathing.
Those of you who have been reading a while can understand how good this is. To do all this and not crash is monumental. I am pleased.
On top of that, as of today I am condensing the pills, no more split dosing. We'll see how that goes over.
The eerie thing is that this taper has gone well just like the taper from 5mg to 4mg of prednisone. Odd that this would be consistent. 4 to 3mg of prednisone marked the beginning of the end last time, will it be the same this time around???
I won't find out for a couple of months. The plan is to just park at 20mg of HC until March. Of course I say that now, knowing full well I will start to get impatient sooner as opposed to later. But the smart thing would be to wait, here's hoping I'm as smart as I think I am.
With the HC's shorter half life and the fact that I'm now at a sub-physiologic dose, between the two, this will hopefully give my HPA axis ample time to recover fully.
On the toddler reading front, if anyone cares, I'm just reading the Usborne Phonics Books and asking her to read the words she knows/introducing her to new ones. This approach seems to be working well and the books also have whimsical plots that hold her interest.
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Should I Get a Second Opinion?
2 days ago
I'm glad the 20 mg HC is working for you! I take 20-25 mg per day depending on how feel. I take first dose about 10am and second dose around 2 in the afternoon. Everybody is different ya gotta do what works for you.\mo
ReplyDeleteHighly suggest you stick to the very slow taper at two to three months. Also try to split the pills if you can, to be less than 1mg drop in dose when you do taper next, so that the percentage you drop by is smaller. This makes a big difference for some of us.
ReplyDeleteHi Mo!
ReplyDeleteYep, I will definitely be dropping the dose veeeeeeery slowly.
Although I keep hoping my HPA will just recover and that I somehow magically won't need to taper anymore. That would be awesome.
M