Guest guest Posted October 3, 2000 Report Share Posted October 3, 2000 Laurie, Whether you can go cold turkey depends on how suppressed your adrenal gland is. You " just " received your transplant so it may not be a problem. Long term prednisone use causes adrenal insufficiency, a condition where the adrenal gland ceases to produce the natural cortisone because there have been such a high level of artificial ones (prednisone). When the prednisone is withdrawn under this condition, the aches and pains that occur can be debilitating because the adrenal gland doesn't step up to produce the natural cortisone we need to function normally. On the TRNSPLNT forum one person reported about prednisone: " One of the TX surgeons at Sacramento was asked about long term users not being able to be weaned off it. He said that the adrenal gland never does go completely to sleep as it still produces other hormones. He suggested that as long as the taper was small and over a longish period, those people should also eventually be able to get off pred. " If you haven't had any severe muscle and joint aches, then you are through and out the other side of prednisone use. I wish there were something I or anyone could point to that would help get you past this drawn-out waiting that you have been going through. The trouble is that you don't have a textbook case and your doctors need to look beyond the textbook solutions they may know about. The PubMed articles are all the things being tried that aren't in the textbooks yet, so they offer the best chance of finding something helpful. Tim --- laurie Coughennower wrote: > Tim-- > > I was on 5 mg Prednisone for about a month or so (higher doses > prior to that) and my dr said I could stop last Thursday. No > tapering at all-just stop. I wonder if that is why I was so > " down " over the weekend and up through today. The only thing > that's helping my mood now is that I'm having my really bad > headaches & taking Oxycodone and I think it's giving me a > mellowed out feeling. Does stopping at 5 mg cold turkey seem > odd to you? > > Laurie __________________________________________________ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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