You'll be ok, especially since you took it for a short time. Might take 24 hrs-one week, but probably not longer. There are other treatments for your back if you're still in pain such as massage, acupuncture, tylenol, ibuprofen, or muscle relaxants which would require a prescription. Also heat or ice. Good luck!

Have you checked in with your doctor about it yet? I know steroids can mess with sleep patterns .

It was prescribed to me once, not to reduce pain, though, but for inflammation. It made me very irritable. I had been warned about unpleasant side effects, so figured it would wear off, and it did. Hang in there.

@cyn427 NoVaZone7 We picked up my prescription at our neighborhood CVS and they attached a drug interaction warning for ""elderly patients" but I tend not to read all of the scary stuff because I don't want to anticipate bad reactions. However, this was a warning well acknowledged. I feel like a Zombie.

This is day 6 of the prescription - one more day to go. My pain is gone. I've been awake since 1:30 this morning. I want to go to sleep but it's not possible. I'm hungry but I can't eat. What a nightmare.

Hopefully you are titrating down now. Prednisone can be useful, but the side effects are awful. I had to take it for severe back pain years ago, and I don’t think I slept for two weeks. Although I was a skeptic, chiropractic care was the answer to my back issues (scoliosis and degenerative disc disease). I get regular adjustments, monthly massage and Pilates three times per week. I hope you feel better soon.

I've taken it 3 times. First time was about 2009 for horrible pain in my leg. Vicodin couldn't touch it. They thought it might be disc-related and prescribed a course of Prednisone, but I don't remember the length of it. They warned me of possible mood changes (fast, slow, sad, mad, etc.). It made the pain stop completely. After various tests, including an MRI, nothing significant showed up. On the last day of the taper off I felt pretty blah, but that was it.

This year I had two mystery flares of crazy itchy patches, like hives, except they weren't. Or poison oak, which it wasn't. It was kind of a head scratcher. The first time they put me on the 9-day course and it stopped the itching and didn't really affect me emotionally. A few months later the itchy patches came back. Like insane itching. This time a 12-day course with a much higher dosage. It again made the itching clear up and again I was mostly fine, except sad animal videos made me sob (I shouldn't have looked at them anyway) and I felt slightly road-ragey at times. But it wasn't awful.

The itching has stayed away and the leg pain never returned. Nevertheless, I wouldn't dive into Prednisone unless I had no other choice.

The highest initial doses cause the most side effects, and then they lessen with each dose. It's tapered because if you stop abruptly you would not be producing enough cortisol on your own. The tapered dose causes you adrenal gland to gradually start producing cortisol again.

My mother took high doses of prednisone continually for more than two decades, along with methotrexate, other antiiflammatory agents and a list of about 20 other things. She would have to be hospitalized to titrate off for surgery and things like that. The side effects were bad, but the alternatives were to be curled up in a rigid ball in a long term care facility or to be dead.

I took it during a viral pneumonia that got me hospitalized for 10 days. This was obviously a long time ago. I remember my "moon" face, constant hunger and irritable mood. I'm so sorry you are going through this and hope you feel better soon. I remember someone telling me it was a "miracle drug" and it is for the good it can do but the side effects are not easy.

Seagrass, I hope you start feeling like you (not old) self again soon. My sister was on a Medrol pack for back pain and she said it did nothing for the pain. Now they have her doing PT and taking Gabapentin. I'm hoping she gets off the Gaba soon as I have only heard awful things about it (mostly brain fog.)

Bunny, could you .have had shingles? I had it a couple of years ago and mine was fairly small and mild. But it really itched! Felt like poison ivy at times.

I'mt tired but I can't sleep. I'm hungry but I can't eat. But the excrusiating pain is gone.