20 mg pills - 3 pills daily for x days, 2 pills daily for x days, 1 pill daily for x days.
So, does this mean 3 pills all at once or spread out in 8 hour increments? My Saunders drug book says it’s usually given 5-60 mg divided doses but everything else I read seems to indicate taking it all at once is the proper method. Neither of my pharmacology books is at all helpful. They tell me it’s a steroid. :rolleyes:
Yes, I realize I can call the pharmacy but they don’t open for 9.5 hours and I’m curious now.
It should give explicit instructions in the paperwork that accompanies your prescription, if not on the pill bottle label itself. I have a bottle in sight right now that clearly states:
“Take 2 tablets by mouth once daily for 3 days then take 1 tablet daily for 4 days then stop.”
That last bit seems a bit unnecessary, since I will be out of pills and not have any other choice at that point, but whatever. I’ve been on prednisone more than a few times and dosing (regardless of dosage) has always been once daily, taken in the morning with food. Always spelled out in the instructions, too.
I think your pharmacy has pretty shitty label instructions, and I hope the complete instructions are better, but absent conflicting instructions, I think “daily” as opposed to “per day” can be assumed to be meant once daily. If it were meant to be taken 3 times per day, surely it would say “3 pills per day, once every 6 hours” or whatever.
I just looked at the bottle. It says once daily. I should have just checked when my fiance asked me what the instructions meant. He left out the once part. :smack:
If you were meant to take them one pill at a time spread out across the day, the instructions would have (or should have) read “take one pill three times daily”.
I had a prescription of the pre-packaged 50-40-30-20-10 pills. That is, 15 pills of 10mg each, to be taken 5 the first day, 4 the second day, 3 the third day, 2 the fourth day, and 1 the last day. The package came with standard pre-printed instructions, indicating that on the earlier days they should be spread out across the day.
Yet the pharmacist typed up the instructions to say that I should take each days’ dose all at once in the morning. I overheard the pharmacist questioning his technician about it, and technician saying explaining “That’s the way the doctor wrote the prescription.”
(As it happened, I never took those pills. I had just finished taking 60mg per day, all at once in the morning, for five days. By then I was starting to feel well enough that I didn’t need them any more, which the doctor was agreeable with.)
As it happens I’m also on Prednisolone - Pred. Acetate eyedrops in my case - and it sounds as if you, like me, are tapering off. My prescription says to spread out the dosage.
But really, since you’re in doubt, call the doctor, not the pharmacy.
Yeah, once daily is the usual method for a prednisone taper.
There’s a prepackaged taper using methylprednisolone (Medrol DosePak) where they actually say to split the pills over the course of the day. The one time I got the DosePak, I decided that was baloney, and took the full daily dose at once.
There are also good reasons to take the entire dose in the morning, in general - less suppression of the HPA axis, I think.
As someone with weird autoimmune shit, and who has been on several different (unfun) steroids for at least a dozen courses…space them out a bit, but don’t take any after 7 PM or so. Otherwise you just might find yourself making banana bread at 3 AM while simultaneously composing a letter to your local newspaper editorial page about something ridiculous. Not that I would know. :rolleyes:
And, dear lord, watch your carb intake. Prednisone munchies are epic.
My ex once came down at 3 AM to find me scrubbing the floor on my hands and knees. Yup, it was day 2 of a steroid regimen after an asthma attack. Day 1, I pass out and sleep because I can breathe. Day 2, I turn into a ferret on a double espresso on a trampoline. (Days 3 through the end, I cry at the drop of a hat. Good times.)
Helps prevent arguments at the pharmacy wherein people are trying to get a refill for a medication they don’t need to keep taking.
I HATE the DosePak. It confuses almost everyone. Taper down is confusing enough for some people - changing not just how many pills but how many times a day to take them is too many changes too rapidly for most of us.