About prednisone

Kelly,

Even if you can get the neurologist to go without prednisone, which may be best accomplished by switching to another one, Emily is still stuck with it for a while. The reason is that this is a drug you cannot really quit; you must taper off of it. You are probably looking at 4 months to get Emily all the way down. That is because the schedule would be something like this:

20 mg; 17.5 mg – week 1
20 mg; 15 mg – week 2
20 mg; 12.5 mg – week 3
20 mg; 10 mg – week 4
20 mg; 7.5 mg – week 5
20 mg; 5 mg – week 6
20 mg; 2.5 mg – week 7
20 mg; 0 mg – week 8
17.5 mg every other day – week 9
15 mg EOD – week 10
12.5 mg EOD – week 11
10 mg EOD – week 12
7.5 mg EOD – week 13
5 mg EOD – week 14
2.5 mg EOD – week 15

The reason is that the adrenal glands effectively shut down the production of cortisol in response to prednisone. It takes awhile for them to get back up to speed. The bad side effects will lessen as the dose lessens, but it could take several months after the cessation for everything to return to normal.

Godspeed with this,
Mark