Dear Medrol,
What a love hate relationship we have, I need you in my life more than I ever want to admit, but oh how I love to hate you. I have been having a bit of a Lupus flare over the last couple of weeks thanks to the grand affections of Mr. Sunshine, and I just cannot seem to get past it without you. I finally gave in and took three of your innocent looking oh so small white pills from the dose pack this morning, in the desperate hope of bringing the wolf back under control. Oh my goodness! How quickly I forgot what a dose of your love can do to me! My insides are dancing the jitterbug and my hands are typing so fast that I just put three periods at the end of the last sentence. My brain is racing through things that need to be done today at a warp speed; completely impossible for the rest of my body to process. Please, my Dearest Medrol, you must not do me wrong. Do use your magical powers to take away this rash and clear the brain fog. Do Give me back my sanity and relieve me from my pain. But I beg of you, please…. DO NOT lead me into the temptation of eating everything in the pantry and refrigerator in the process. Last, may our love affair be short and sweet, leaving behind no bitter aftertaste. Perhaps I am asking too much of you?
Yours Truly,
The Lupie with a Medrol High
Dauntless Dames 
Now that’s interesting because I have had prednisolone both ordinary white tabs and the enteric coated version in the UK as well as being switched to Medrol because I moved to Italy where prednisolone isn’t available. I didn’t have much trouble except rearrangement of weight to my waist until I started Medrol. Then it was leg muscle wasting – and rearrangement of hair growth! I mentioned it to the rheumy who dismissed it as nothing. It wasn’t a big deal that day – but a couple of months later it was. I’ve been white haired for 20 years (I gave up colouring it at 40) but suddenly I had a good going very dark beard.
Mercifully my GP was knowledgeable enough to realise there was something wierd – because apart from any other consideration I needed 20mg/day of the Medrol where I’d been fine on 9 mg of prednisolone and it only gave me any daytime relief if I took it at 11pm. If I took it in the morning it took until 3pm to have any effect at all. She gave me Lodotra, a special delayed release format of prednisone used in rheumatology. I have polymyalgia rheumatica so there aren’t any options – the only thing found to control the symptoms so far is pred, hopefully at below 10mg/day, but some of us struggle even there.
Eileen,
I’m Sorry it took me so long to respond to your comment, life seemed to get overwhelmingly busy there for a while. It’s funny how different people can react so differently to the same medication. For me the Medrol seems to work much better than the Prednisone and I have fewer issues with weight gain. It does make me jittery for the first few days but after that it just gives me a little more energy. I took it in a low dose (10mg/day) for almost a solid year with very few side effects. At this time I’m trying hard to stay off of any steroids and just take the Plaquenil but I’m really struggling with sun sensitivity and rashes this year.