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Switch from letrozole to exemestane

Breast Cancer | Last Active: Nov 9 2:17pm | Replies (46)

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Hi MistyMar,
I feel your pain. I feel trapped by being told I must take this or one of the aromatase inhibitors (pick your poison) the rest of my life. All the side effects you mentioned, not to mention osteoporosis and linked to cardiac issues, as well. “Yes, we can delay your death from cancer, but you will feel lousy, be tired all the time and have painful side effects, but we can give you more drugs for what ails you. The cancer might not kill you yet, but the massive amounts of drugs and their side effects might. Depressing.

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Replies to "Hi MistyMar, I feel your pain. I feel trapped by being told I must take this..."

I fully agree. I’ve always said I’m not doing the “circular medicine” - take this medication, now take this one to stop the side effects of the other one, now take this medication……. Everything here is rock vs hard place. No, you don’t have to do chemo but if you have mets in 2 years, too late to say “gee, I should have done chemo”. This is the same. I really don’t want to have to go through all this again so not sure I want to stop this medication if I don’t absolutely have to BUT there is that quality of life issue. My cancer group is saying 5 years only (claims research shows no difference between taking 5 vs 10 years) so hopefully that holds but things can change as we get closer. Luckily so far, heart tests normal and last bone scan was also normal without taking any bone meds (I declined). So I stay on the meds and try to survive all this that according to them aren’t side effects of the medication. Not sure I would survive without forums like this and knowing it’s not just me.

I think it’s time that people were more honest - it’s often put across as ‘ take these you are ok’ far from the reality .
I certainly feel I was not given enough information and feel it’s expected of me to ‘feel ok’.