On 20 mg Tamoxifen, the first few weeks I had warm flashes and more moody. My eyebrows thought they might want to be a unibrow 🙂 Extra brow hair grew more in between my brows (not a lot) and some above my natural brow. As the body adjusts to the change of hormones, it leans toward a higher level of testosterone - ergo the unibrow. It was easily tweezed away. By 6 weeks, I seemed to settle into difficulty with thermal regulation- no hot flashes, but if I overheated, like in a hot car, or standing in Texas summer heat, my body took a longer time to cool off. My hair thinned some. I was more likely to cry at sad movies. I do have a slight vaginal discharge, a thin milky-like substance. It is caused by an pH imbalance from the tamoxifen, it does not bother me. I have not had any vaginal infections. I do not douche.

Before the cancer, I had vaginal dryness, vaginal atrophy, and osteoporosis. After taking tamoxifen, the vaginal issues were reversed, no atrophy. Tamoxifen can act as an estrogen agonist (promotes estrogen like action) in other parts of the body outside of the breasts. With taking Reclast my DEXA scores at the hips have improved to osteopenia, my spine has improved but is at -2.5.

At 3 months on tamoxifen I started having headaches 24/7. Not migraines. My regular doctor went through every possibility for headaches, found nothing, and I had a brain MRI. The radiology report said they found nothing remarkable (thank you very much!!) But that was good news. I saw the neurologist on staff at the cancer center and the conclusion was that the tamoxifen was causing the headaches. I changed to 5 mg, and the headaches have gone away.
Interestingly, I’ve noticed more head hair growing in. I have this fringe most noticeable in front of my ears, about 5 inches long. That’s about the right length for the time I switched from 20 to 5 mg - when maybe the higher testosterone dropped.
I have not had any bone or joint pain on tamoxifen. I started on tamoxifen at age 68, three years ago.