Anastrozole side effects: Finger-wrist joint pain

Posted by shenriq @shenriq, Jul 14, 2017

I have been taking Anastrozole for 7 months. Initial joint pain affected neck legs, too, but I am better tolerating it, with the exception of my hands/wrists. Can anybody tell me what's driving this? I'm trying to understand what is going on and long term considerations.

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Any links to Anastrazole and high blood pressure? I have been on anastrazole for 2 years. Did pretty well and had no real complaints. Most issues were at the beginning and dissipated. However about 6 months ago I felt like everything was kind of off. Brain fog. Sleeplessness. Jittery. Depressed. Now High blood pressure - which I never had and GERDS.
This does accumulate in the system... Has anytbody run into new issues after being on this a few years?
In all honesty, I want to go off it altogether. Though everything is tolerable, I feel like I will end up with problems in all areas and on alot of medications.

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This is very interesting. I have been on anastrozole since May 2018. I seldom had any kind of issues with it until just recently. I am blaming it for the pains and decreased movement in my wrists and hands and in one ankle/foot. I have been taking blood pressure meds for years which has controlled it, but at my physical in October, my BP was quite high...enough to scare me. My GP is concerned. I have been monitoring it myself at his direction and it seems to be all over the place...some times very good and other times not so much. I am not sure if I should associate that with anastrozole or my life being turned upside down for the last 6 months. My daughter and her husband have separated since the loss of their home to foreclosure and she has moved in with me in my very small house with her two large dogs. She and I and a friend did most of her moving over the summer and that was physically taxing. Also, I was sent for a breast MRI (routine) in Sept. and the radiology/breast cancer division at the major NJ hospital where I had it read compared it to the 2 MRIs I had done in 2017 and 2018.....before my last breast cancer surgery in 2018 instead of the one I had done in March 2020 before my bilateral mastectomy in July 2020. When I first saw the result on MYChart I almost had a heart attack. The hospital called me and wanted me to go for a mammo and ultrasound and possibly a biopsy. After I got myself calmed a bit, I asked them why they did not compare it to the MRI of 3/2020 and they had no record of it and had lost the views. Of course I went nuts over that and they managed to turn it around and make me the bad guy because I was raising heck. Fortunately, the plastic surgeon that did the reconstruction saw me immediately and told me he saw the new views and that it was just fat necrosis which is normal with diep flap reconstruction. Thank God for him!!!! ( If anyone needs an excellent plastic surgeon in northern NJ, I will be glad to give out his name. I will also be glad to share the name of the hospital that lost the views.) He did calm me down to a degree, but the stress from thinking I had cancer for a third time and all this took its toll. Anyway, yes, I feel that the anastrozole is affecting me more now. My oncologist always asks me about my hands. I will stay with it because it is manageable and because I need to think psychologically that it is helping me.

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