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Aromatase Inhibitors: Did you decide to go on them or not?
Breast Cancer | Last Active: Sep 22 2:13pm | Replies (1230)Comment receiving replies
I tried both Anastrozole and Letrozole sequentially for about 4 months, trying to find one that wouldn't affect my BP. Had moderately high BP before. The AI's both slowly raised my BP, until finally they caused me to develop Labile Hypertension. I quit them immediately. You do not want this, it makes treating your blood pressure a guessing game & affects whether you can take anti-inflammatories in the future (I can't). Next we tried Fulvestrant shots for 4 months, another type of hormone blockers. This also made my BP wacky, ended up giving me a leg rash, muscle & joint aches & pains. It DID shrink my chest wall tumor by 2/3, so that's a great thing. I tried to talk the Doc into a lower dose since I'm med sensitive, but she said no, we can't do that here at the Cancer Ctr, for FDA approval. I said that's it, can't deal with the leg pains. So now I'm going on to Tamoxifen, but am going to use my pill cutter to take the dose I think my body can stand, slowly upping it. She doesn't know that yet.
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I’m on tamoxifen and have high blood pressure, there was no noticeable difference in BP with the tamoxifen. I had labile hypertension before this all started, they like to call it “white coat” syndrome because I’m always high in the doctor’s office. That, I believe, is from low estrogen for some of us - which tracks with the problems you had on AIs.
I started on 20mg, but am now on 5 mg. I cut the pill. I won’t take 10 mg every other day - might work okay, but when trying to lower tamoxifen (before protocols changed to allow 5 mg a day) I was taking 10 mg every day and still had headaches, and I’m afraid the fluctuations of every other day will bring headaches back.
Tamoxifen doesn’t cut well - I’ve tried 3 different pill cutters. The pharmacy refuses to cut it. I now use a single edge razor blade, and put the pill on a small pile of paper, then cut. The blade is very sharp, and the softer surface of the paper seems to give enough so the pill doesn’t crumble as much. I don’t get it precisely in half, but no worries. In two days, I get the full amount, maybe a little less one day, maybe a little more the next. The half life of tamoxifen is 7 days, so there is always a quite high residual amount in my body.