will the side effects of prednisone EVER go away ??

[radhikabatra15]

HI I'm a 19 year old Medical student suffering from Takayasu's arteritis since may 2010.Im currenly taking 9mg of prednisone daily and 20 mg of methotrexate weekly . My treatment began with 60mg of prednisone and 10 mg of methotrexate and the prednisone was then tapered. Though my Esr and CRP are now normal , and disease activity is low , it is the serious side effects of the steroids that concern me .

Will the moon face ever really go away ?? My face has bloated to thrice its size. I've put on around 10 pounds. Everyone keeps telling me to excercise but i have severe muscle pain almost everyday .. My bone densitometry shows osteopenia..And i keep getting repeated skin allergies and other infections..

Even though the dose of prednisone has been tapered there's no reduction in the size of my face. :-(

I'm losing hope . Please help :-(

[catzz]

Surprising the moon face hasn't come down as the dose tapers, whenever I've been on pred, there was big improvement down at 10 mg (started 60mg).  Maybe with some people, the dose has to get closer to 5 or less. It really is temporary though, will go away. I completely understand as I HATED the moon face, and my 10 lb weight gain was despite exercising as much self control as possible - I could think of little else but food. Don't lose hope..