[misc.handicap] Prednisone & Tapering off

Nadine.Thomas@p1.f7.n300.z1.fidonet.org (Nadine Thomas) (04/25/91)

Index Number: 15147

 >Nadine, I see what you mean about Prednisone being almost addictive.  First
 >they tried to take me off at 10 milligrams, after all my symptoms returning
 >after a week, they took me back up.  Yesterday I started dropping at 2.5
 >millgrams
 >at two weeks at a time.  I found my legs cramping over and over again, lower
 >side.  They use to do that when I was in my teens but have not had a problem
 >with that until trying to reduce the steriods in probably 10 years!

Try drinking gatorade ( personally like the orange flavored) and make sure you
are getting lots of potassium - either in pill supplements or lots of foods
high in it - broccoli, bananas, etc. - pill form is best.  Take for at least
2 weeks and let me know how it is.

 >Blood sugar
 >is sky high at 256 on the last reading, well that is not sky high, but if it
 >stays there I'll get to add diabetes to my growing list of disease.  Once
 >your
 >blood sugar shot up, did it ever come back down? What about the rest of you.
 > I don't want insulin too!  Well maybe I want have the cramps again tonight.

I had split my prednisone dose - some in the morning and some before bedtime.
I did that on my own. Docs had a fit when they learned what I had done.  Anyway,
when I was dropping the dose I decreased and stopped the night dose. That showed
a drastic drop in my morning blood glucose levels.  So the answer is yes, I
did find it dropping when I was reducing the prednisone.  Since I am still on
prednisone (morning dose only) I cannot tell you if my blood sugars would go
back to normal or not if I was to stop taking the prednisone.  You may need
to take some insulin (maybe oral) to just keep your body from getting toxic
(ketoacidosis) and starving itself.

Take care.

Nadine

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