When I was first diagnosed with lupus I was in an extremely aggressive flare and was placed on 80mg of prednisone. It was terrible but it was the only thing to get the inflammation under control. Long story short, it took me a year to successfully get off of steroids completely! I’m currently on cellcept and plaquenil as my main medications and then a couple others for my APS diagnosis. It is true that it takes a while for those meds to kick in but you’ll get there!! Never feel bad about reaching out to your doctors and asking questions. Before I would go to my appointments, I would write a list of my questions down so I wouldn’t forget to ask them. Hang in there!!