[amanda59]

Hi my name is Amanda and I am new to this forum. I am hoping somebody out there may be able to alleviate my concerns.

Four months ago, I had massive sinus inflamation and allergies around my eyes. The doctor put me on prednisolone tabs, three daily, for three days, then two daily for four days etc, and then one daily.

However as the sinus and allergies continued, I was kept on the drug once a day. I had to see a couple of different doctors during this time, and always advised the length of time I had been on them.

Last week I had to go back because of an ongoing neck problem, and was put on 4 tablets daily for three days to reduce inflammation. I finished these two days ago, and have not taken any tablets since. (basically the doctor told me to do this) I have had a lot of fluid retention, weight gain, red face and increased appetite during the last few months. It is only now I decided to do some more research on the drug, and was horrified to see so many side effects caused from long term usage (4 months for me). Since I have now just gone off the tablets and it is the second day, whilst I feel fine, I am concerned I should have been weaned off them.

Has anybody been in my situation, and if you have gone off the tablets suddenly how long does it take for the side effects to go away?

I hope somebody might be able to give me some assistance here, and look forward to any responses.

Amanda

[Director]

Hi Amanda: Welcome to the Boards. I'm in the US, but I think I might be able to answer some questions for you even though you're in Australia.

I was on Prednisone about three years ago after they found the start of a tumor in my right lung. I had lung surgery a year before and they removed a non-malignant tumor mass from my upper lobe of my left lung. Now, a year later I have the same thing beginning in the right lung.

They immediately put me on Prednisone, 60 mg a day. I don't recall now the time frame in the steps, but they slowly decreased my daily amounts of the drug. I'm very fortunate not to have suffered any of the many side effects of Prednisone.

I think it was somewhere about 20 mg, they did one of several CT scans, and told me the tumor was gone and my lung was "clean" again. I continued a slow downward weaning of the Prednisone. I went all the way down to 1 mg, where I remained for about two weeks and then they took me off the drug.

That was a year and a half ago, and I just had another CT Scan, to check to make sure all was OK. The results came back clean, so I was releived to hear the news.

Since I didn't suffer any of the side effects, with the exception of weight gain (I gained about 30 pounds), but that came off quite rapidly. I'm now back to my normal weight of about 170 pounds. Sorry, I wasn't more help to you, but I wanted to at least respond to your post.

Director