That is the thing about steroids, which Prednisone is. The dosage will always have to be increased because it stops being effective enough. Steroids are
extremely bad for your body, because they do not really do anything to address the pain. Instead what they do is increase adrenaline, which makes you feel better. But if you continue to take a steroid, especially if you increase the dosage, what happens is that your body stops producing adrenaline on its own, and that is a very bad thing. If you ever go off the steroid, you will go through a terrible and dangerous time because your body has become seriously addicted to it. Additionally, the use of steroid medication can lead to kidney disease, liver damage, high blood pressure, fluid retention, weight gain, mood swings, lowered immunity and other very serious conditions.
The best advice I can give to you is to stop taking steroids entirely. You will need to do this correctly if you have been taking them for a long time, so get a doctor to tell you how to go about it. If you have only been taking steroid medication for a short time, then you can wean yourself off it, or if you only just started within the past month you can just stop.
There are many things you can do to help yourself and ease the severity and the frequency of FM pain without using drugs, and I strongly recommend that you check out my post about that and start trying any and all of the things recommended there that you are able to do. It can make a huge difference, and has for many people, to make lifestyle changes that support your overall health.
If you can live without pain medication, do. Just go through the days of pain and accept them for what they are. That is what I do the vast majority of the time. If your pain is so severe that all you can do is lie on a couch and groan, then some kind of medication is appropriate, but if the Cymbalta and the steroids are not doing it for you, you need to try something else. I have found that combining an OTC pain medication with a doctor-prescribed muscle relaxant will often do the job. It won't remove the pain, but it will bring it down to a level that I can still function. On the very worst days I need something stronger, but I only have days like that occasionally now that I have improved my overall lifestyle, and a large part of that is learning to accept the pain instead of fighting it.
Taking more and more pain medication that is terrible for your health is not the best approach, as it will bring you even more misery eventually.
Check out this post, and if you have questions, please ask.
I am not a doctor or anything, just a person who has lived with fibromyalgia for several years now and has done a lot of research and trial and error experimentation. What follows is just basics. There are a lot of variations. You will find your own versions of everything I say, as this is not a...
www.fibromyalgiaforums.org
