I have been on Forteo for 16 months. No side effects. I am 70 and started with severe osteoporosis in spine (-3.9), -2.7 in hip. I took 3.5 years of Fosomax first (again, no side effects) with no change. I wish I had started with an anabolic such as Forteo first but didn't even know about them at the time. I had bone markers done on my own (since my rheum does not uses them) as a baseline before I started the Forteo. Two months later (it might have been three, I don't recall off the top of my head) I had them done again. I asked the doctor to order them this time even though they don't use them to make treatment decisions (a lot of doctors don't) so that my insurance (a Medicare Advantage plan) would cover it, although it wasn't very expensive to pay it out of pocket. They agreed. The 2nd test did show it was working for me. I haven't had any since. I'm due for a DEXA next month. Although the black box warning on Forteo has been removed, I think risk of osteosarcoma is still listed as a potential risk. I'm by no means an expert on this, but I believe the risk is primarily for longer term use than the studied 2 years. All the meds have potentially serious side effects. The most serious ones may be rare or rare-ish, but of course that's of small consolation to the unfortunate ones it does happen to. You will have to decide if you think the benefit outweighs the risk. I decided it did.