I think I remember either doing 2 1/2 or doing every other day.  Pretty sure
it was every other day, for about ten days and then every third day and then
off.

Jo

My RD tapered me very slowly, 4 mg. for 4 or 5 days, then 3, then 2 then 1. All
doses were for 4 or 5 days. He prescribed 1 mg. tabs for the taper. There are
many ways to do it, but slowly is the way. It takes the adrenals quite a while
to go  back into production. They usually generate about 5 mg. a day according
to my RD.

---
Joan

My Dr has me at 6 MG, then down to 5.5MG for another month then 5MG for
another month. I have been on Prednisone plus other meds for over 6 years.
He said not to be too surprised if I can 'never' get off it entirely. Tried
going down 1 full MG and went right back into a flare so he upped me to
where I had been then started the tapering off at .5MG and I didn't flare,
so that is how I am doing it now. It may take longer to get off but it may
also mean I can stay off once I am. My body has become very sensitive to
medicine. HTH

Butterfly

If your doctor is useless, check with the pharmacist, they know more
about drugs than the average doc anyway.
Lyn

I break my tablets in half and do 5, then 2.5, and keep alternating for
that week. Then 2.5 for the next week. Then, 0 or alternate 0 and 2.5. I
believe there are 1mg tablets to be had. Obviously there's a need for
them or the drug manufacturers wouldn't have a profit incentive to make
them! Too bad his doctor hasn't figured out about individual differences
yet :-(

Ari

I think it really depends on how long hie's been on it. If it hasn't been
more than a couple months, he can do it quciker - 1 mg drops every 3-5 days.
But if he's been on it for 6 mths or more, it's best to go REALLY slow,
partic. from such a high dose. Get the 1mg tabs and split them in half. Go
down a .5mg each week. Sometimes you have to even do weeks with alternating
days. (ex. 2mg, then 1.5mg, then 2mg for a week before going down to 2mg for
the whole week). I was on pred for 4 years and it was a bear to get off of
it. It took forwver to get down from 2.5 mg. I'd go down a 1/2 and begin to
flare. But I finally made it... been off it for 3 mths now. I had what i'd
call a mini flare, where I'm swelling more than before but it was important
for me to get off the pred so I'm living with it and thanking everything
under the sun that it wasn't a full flare. good luck

alison

The schedule that will prevent a flare is one that isn't a schedule
you try to stick to, but a flexible plan that retreats at the slightest
suspicion of an impending flare.

If your adrenals have shut down due to high pred dosages for some time
then kickstarting them can be very difficult. The difficult period
happens around the replacement dosage, which is somewhere between 5mg
and 10mg/day for most people. For me it was 6mg/day. I eventually
settled on a strategy of shifting to alternate day dosages, the idea
being that the residual anti-inflammatory effect of pred lasts a lot
longer than the actual drug stays in the system, so you can take it
every other and stay clear of flares, while giving your adrenals a
regular prod in the backside on the days you take nothing.

So when I was on 6mg/day, which my rheumatologist said I'd obviously
need to be on for the rest of my life, I started by cutting down the
dosage 1mg at a time, only on alternate days, i.e., my first cut would
be 6mg one day, 5mg the next, then 6mg again. Then I'd go to 6 and 4,
and so on.

I discovered by experiment that if I was going to flare I would start
feeling increased joint pains and stiffness in about ten days after
reducing the dosage. So my strategy was to reduce dose, and wait for a
fortnight. As soon as any signs of an impending flare appeared, I'd
shift back to the previous dose, with an initial one time bonus dose
of +2mg to help dampen the flare. I regard flares as being damaging,
and to be strenuously avoided.

If the reduction was successful I'd make another one. Eventually I got
down to 6mg every other day. Then I started cutting down on that in
the same way.

When I was taking 1mg every other day my doc refused to believe I
could tell the difference between that and taking nothing, but
fortunately he was prepared to humor me and keep prescribing.

Once I'd got completely off, every now and then I'd feel a flare
coming. I'd deal with it by a once only dose of 2mg, or if it was
really bad, 4mg.

Those once-only control doses were necessary at intervals of several
weeks for several months. They gradually got less and less frequent. I
assume that was because the maximum capacity of my adrenals to cope
with occassional emergency demands was increasing.  They now seem to be
necessary once every few years, usually if I have a nasty viral
infection.

Just in case it helped, I also made a point of taking scary exercise
every now and then, such as climbing a cliff or running down a scree
slope. I hoped that would be giving my adrenals a prod. I did notice
that scary exercise was always good for chasing joint pains away, much
better than just plain vanilla non-scary exercise.