First, I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you. Second, I’m sorry this is soooooo long, but I figured while I had his notebook out I might as well record from birth to now in case it will help any one else.

I don’t know how the mgs of my son’s cortisone acetate or prednisone correlate to other meds that are now used, but I’ll give you his stats:

When my son was first diagnosed at 2 months old they started him on 7.5 mg of cortisone acetate and 0.2 mg florinef acetate per day. He took 2.5 mg cortisone three times a day, and 0.2 mg florinef once a day. They never told me how to give the pills to him or when to give the doses. I had to figure it out. I spread out his doses of cortisone and gave them every 8 hours. And since it was late evening when he got his very first dose of florinef, I continued to give it to him with the late night dose. That meant waking him around midnight, which I did, and he eventually took his meds for me & never woke all the way up.

He basically stayed on those doses until he was about 5 or 6 years old, then they increased his night dose to 5 mg (so he was then taking 10 mg cortisone acetate per day).

At 7 or 8 years old they doubled all the doses of cortisone...5 mg cortisone acetate morning & late afternoon, and 10 mg at night. (that made 20 mg cortisone per day).

His florinef dose stayed the same (0.2 mg once daily) until he was 8 or 9 years old, then they lowered it to 0.1 mg on odd dates and 0.2 mg on even dates.

Somewhere in 1995 or ’96 (he was 10 or 11 years old) we could no longer get the cortisone acetate pills in 5 mg form, so he was switched to prednisone. The mg conversion to prednisone was quite different...he was now on 2 mg prednisone twice daily. The alternating dose of florinef stayed the same.

When he was 12 years old they lowered his prednisone to 2 mg in the morning & 1 mg at night

When he was 13 years old they switched the doses to 1 mg in the morning & 2 mg at night...we were all hoping this would help him in school, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.

When he was 14 years old and puberty finally started, his prednisone was increased to 5 mg twice daily and his florinef was increased to 0.2 mg daily (which his doctored also had him start taking in the morning for the first time in his life---no particular reason, just that "that is when florinef is usually taken").

For the next year and a half (til he was about 15 1/2 years old) we kept changing his prednisone a little bit back & forth until we found a happy medium for him which has been 5 mg in the morning & 2.5 mg in the evening on odd dates or 5 mg in the morning & 5 mg in the evening on even dates. His florinef stayed at 0.2 mg daily in the morning. We added a multivitamin and 500 mg Oscal (calcium) to insure strong bones.

He is now 17 1/2 years old and still on this dose. He is 5 ft 3.5 in tall & weighs 116 lbs. His blood father & I are both about 5 ft 4 in. His last bone age was done right before his 17th birthday and it shows "adult bone age" which is technically 16 years old...I’m hoping he will still grow some (I know many boys who’ve grown a lot between the age of 17 & 21!) but if he doesn’t, he’s satisfied where he’s at.

Through all of his years he has only gone to the hospital once for vomiting (we didn’t have the injection kit yet at that time) Other than that we have gotten him through everything from bee stings, to a smashed finger, tonsillitis, a broken bone (that we didn’t know was broke til a week later), mental stress, chicken pox, and imbedded tics just with double doses and sometimes never even had to double dose.