Hi! @saraabrooks:

My heart goes out to you and our prayers will be with you all through your upcoming surgery on 5/24.

Best wishes on the journey forward, for better and healthier days are ahead!

I was put on Anastrozole on Feb. 1, 2022, after a lumpectomy (right breast) on Jan. 27, 2022. This was not even a week out of surgery, and I was fighting a seroma (infection), taking 500 mg. of Cephalexan every 4 hours for literally weeks. My symptoms began in earnest in Week 13/14, the weeks we visit our time shares in Cancun. If you subtract the month of January, that means 9 weeks in. I experienced dry skin, dry eyes leading to blurry vision (which was so bad I had an eye doctor check me), mood swings, teariness, vivid violent nightmares and then my left knee, fragile from a 1997 bicycling accident, blew out, putting me in a wheelchair for 6 months with meniscus tear symptoms. I had been in a study for damaged and arthritic joints from 1997 to 2020 (the MOST study) and should never have been put on any A.I. drug. The pain was excruciating in my damaged knee and left elbow and back and I was given nothing for pain. After my knee quit working, I had to be injected with 32 ml of an anti-inflammatory drug and 6 ml of Durolane and was wheeled to my first post-operative mammogram on October 3, 2023. I went off everything for 9 months, but then tried Tamoxifen for 5 months: extreme exhaustion (could be up only 3 hours), a constant ongoing urge to urinate, and frequent, seemingly never-ending UtIs. I quit Tamoxifen on Aug. 30, 2023, a point at which my blood work showed that 10 things had gone "bad" since the March 7th blood work that showed normal results. I had 33 radiation sessions that started in May (2022) and ended in July. I'm hoping they will protect me from cancer and from having to take the horrible pills.

Hi Sara--reading everyone's experience w/ Anastrozole. I am wondering cuz I did not see, that you wrote what type of breast cancer you have and are you having a double or single mastectomy, or??
I've been dealing off and on w/ Lobular BC tumors (double mast , 2012,,, then felt a tumor in arm pits 2019, &2022... never had chemo , but did have radiation in '19 & again in '22.
11/30/23 they found a sm lesion on Vertebrae (all BC on left side )- Metastatic Lobular BC to Bone 2cm) Never took Tamoxifen , but NOW have been a mo. in w/ Anastrozole. I was sitting on a fence over the Holidays about taking it...and I have not had the side affects (so far) but had a CT scan today and it was showing so far good, no progression in the last 3.5 mos. THE questionable thing my Oncology PA said was with Metastatic BC the Anastrozole works on avg. 6-12mos. then a different drug is tried....to combat what ever the deterioration of patient's BC... She said "Oh there are some patients w/ metastatic take it for for years and are alive 10 yrs at this point.".... I wonder what happens to a typical Metastic BC to bone patient after 6-12 mos on Anastrozole....