Concerned about the side effects of anastrozole

@ncgal
For me personally, the anastrozole made it so I could barely walk -- between my ankles, feet, back, wrists, and hands it was horrendous. I was next placed on letrozole for which the pains was not quite as bad but gave me migraine headaches. Following that I was placed on exemestane and that had been much, much better. For the hair I read articles on Mayo about women taking biotin for my thinning hair and believe that has helped somewhat. Best of luck to you.

I started on Anestrozole in December of 2019 after my last breast cancer treatment. In late January I started to get muscle and bone aches so bad that I could hardly walk. I had a follow up appointment with my radiologist and mentioned it to her and she suggested that it might be the Anestrozole. I called my oncologist and he suggested I stop taking Anestrozole for two weeks to see if that helped. It didn't! The oncologist suggested that I see my regular GP who took blood work and s aid that I was just anemic. He sent me to a neurologist who did additional blood work and found out I had Polymyalgia Rheumatica, an auto-immune disorder. He sent me to a Rheumatologist. By now, this was April so I spent 4 months in pain. The day the rheumatologist put me on
10 mgs of Prednisone the pain stopped in it's tract. We still don't know the cause and I have flare-ups where I have to again increase the Prednisone. I don't know if the Anestrozoe caused these symptoms or if they came from somewhere else (some say stress as we have had a rough year with both my husband's health and mine). I started back on Anestrozole after the two week hiatus and the only problem I am presently having apart from PMR is hair loss. I lost all my hair during chemo for breast cancer but it came back thick and curly, only to go straight and limp a few months later. Now I seem to be losing more and more of it with patches in my scalp without hair. I have tried all the Keratin sprays and Keranique shampoos but nothing helps. Any suggestions would be appreciated if you have found a way to strengthen and help growth of hair.

Hi Trixie, I 'm so sorry you and your family are having to endure this again. We live near Concord and have all of our windows closed due to the smoke from those fires. I hope everything will be all right for you this time, and for your kids. Sending love...

@sparklegram @dmgweiss @trixie1313
The four of us appear to be living in the same general area. When the fires relent, and the virus subsides, we need to get together for lunch and share war stories. We are more than cancer survivors!

@sparklegram @dmgweiss @trixie1313
The four of us appear to be living in the same general area. When the fires relent, and the virus subsides, we need to get together for lunch and share war stories. We are more than cancer survivors!

@elizm
Sounds good to me! The area in the city next to me is now in a warning zone. Praying this comes under control soon.

Thanks, Trixie. I'll look into the biotin.

Be aware that biotin will mess with any thyroid test, and can skew the results either way (too high or too low). Make sure you tell your doc before a thyroid test. Otherwise you might go down a rabbit hole trying to figure out what is wrong with your thyroid!

@chamisa
Thanks for that reminder. I had seen that on other posts. I've stopped taking that last week as I'm having a PET scan in a few days and didn't want to chance messing that up. Hoping the lesion they saw on my lung goes magically away.