New from Perth, Western Australia

[Natalie]

Good to hear Deanne

[drz]

Hi elephant, I am on 10mg of preds and 75mg of cyclophosphamide at the moment, the doc may change the cyclo to Imuran in dec but we have to take it slowly as last time i had eye problems with the med reduction too much too soon. thanks

How slow do we have to go in tapering both? I am about the same dosage now with 12.5 and 75 each day but told the plan is to keep decreasing both and then switch to something less toxic than the Cytoxan. I have no idea what it will be or what will work out best for me but guess it is like everything else and done by trail and error and based upon doctors experience and best guess of what will work best for this patient.

What eye problems did you develop?

[elephant]

I don't know much about Cytoxan didn't take it this time around. But my experience is that I personally have to taper prednisone very slow. Once I hit the 10 mg mark, I tapered down 1 mg every four weeks. But that was too fast for me so now I am tapering down 1/2 mg every four weeks.

[Sangye]

drz, how fast you can taper pred depends on what kind of doses you've been on and how long you've been on them. Elephant has been on 10mg for quite awhile, so has to go extremely slow. Even the 1mg every 4 weeks is slower than many people need to go who haven't been on pred that long.

I was on ctx but didn't taper off of it.