Concerned about the side effects of anastrozole
I completed all treatments for breast cancer but now I am supposed to take hormone blocker, named anastrozole. im concerned about the side effects. Has anyone here taken it and did anyone have hair loss?
Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Breast Cancer Support Group.
Question, has anyone experienced high potassium levels and or kidney disease as a side effect of anastrozole?
It is, but for those post menopausal women that can’t tolerate AI’s FICA can prescribe Tamoxifen as an alternative. It’s not as effective though.
You March on to your own best and stay healthy!
I am a senior who is also going to see the Rolling Stones with my 71 yo husband.
I am staying on the drug for now, however may go to every other day and see if that helps. I'm determined to continue to take care of my grandchildren!
Safe travels.
Thanks, Flowergal. I review at WeeklyWilson.com and also on TheMovieBlog.com,
I've been reviewing film (a sidelight, as I taught and had "real" jobs, too) since 1970, first starting out in the real newspaper (Quad City Times, Davenport, Iowa.) In fact, I compiled my reviews from that paper in a book entitled "It Came from the 70s: From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now." (available on Amazon with 10 trivia questions per film, with the answers upside-down on the next page.)
I have covered the Chicago International Film Festival for over 20 years and have done SXSW since about 2015 and also, over the years, have been Press at Sundance and the Vancouver Film Festival and in Denver, Nashville, and others (Windy City Film Festival, but that time I was a finalist in the screenplay competition.) The injury to my left knee was devastating for SXSW last year, but they were very kind to me, and, somehow, I made it through the continuous standing that occurs when you are waiting for the "stars" to show up. I hope to be able to continue reviewing, as I have for 52 straight years, for the forseeable future. I also write "long" on occasion and those works (30+) are up on ConnieCWilson.com. To say that I found being in a wheelchair for over half a year inconvenient is putting it mildly. Would any of us want to be unable to take ourselves to the bathroom? Is that the price I must pay to "protect" myself against a recurrence---being semi-crippled? It's not even a guarantee of protection and it's too steep a price to pay. As for the Tamoxifen, my good friend Sue Ann Raymond (now 84) had her lumpectomy in 2013 and was put on Tamoxifen and described how she could not even get out of bed! Sue Ann is an Episcopalian minister in small-town Iowa and she simply pushed the pills back on the oncologist's desk and said, "It's in God's hands." Since then, she has shepherded her flock, jumped out of an airplane to raise money for a new roof, and been approached to run for Mayor. None of those things would have been possible if she had remained on Tamoxifen back in 2013 when it was prescribed to "protect" her. It really is a "risks versus benefits" thing, and, while I am justifiably apprehensive, I practice what I call Eternal Vigilance and try to push thoughts of my demise to the back corners of my over-active imagination. I'm in Austin (Tx) right now, planning our annual trek back to Illinois to avoid the heat of summer and thinking about "writing long" again with a 4th book in my 3-book series "The Color of Evil." I'll be attending the Rolling Stones concert at Soldier Field on June 27 and, in the 3 days after that, the Sundance films are being shown in Chicago for 3 days (although I reviewed most of the winners on my WeeklyWilson blog already.) As I have written elsewhere, my mother---a 4-shots-a-day diabetic---lived to be almost 96 and played bridge ALL the time (once flying to Hawaii to play in a tournament that Omar Sharif played in!). I'm not about to quit living life, nor am I willing to suffer the tortures of the damned on the off chance that these toxic substances might "protect" me somehow. I'm going to be trying to find out about any other clinical trials of the sort explained here:
https://www.icr.ac.uk/news-archive/research-uncovers-how-to-target-sleeping-breast-cancer-cells-and-prevent-relapse?fbclid=IwAR30J3Q-rBjOi2h653iqloUDgUD-2TV6B9qUjB2G1uLrSk2Mnxb12SCW4OY_aem_Ac_UcOuM91zMYSJF2X-kEA47-wtYrIKVQjcqT08TocMmdZp6Z-yVPtB2EKZR2x9liFgCGfYbeVjOTOcI-CDMi9za
It is so complicated! I took have osteopenia and on Anastrozole. I had Prolia shots in 2019 and massive dental work in early 2021. Luckily everything went well.
I had been in fosamax in earlier years, but my jaw bone was good.
So many things we have to balance now that I never worried about before. I understand what you are saying.
Right now for me it's fatigue. Really struggling.
I can relate to you as far as the energy needed for an active life. I am struggling now with no energy I could do nothing all day. I try and push through the side effects but need help.
I like that you are a fellow cinephile. I've been attending the Telluride Film Festival since 1997. I have met so many interesting people there. I don't think I will be going back now, but I so enjoyed it. I liked reading about your festival.
Maybe, but there are plenty of women of all ages who can’t tolerate the inflammatory action of the A.I. pills and are moved to Tamoxifen, instead.
I thought Tamoxifen is prescribed for premeopause women...
I hope so, too, Baylaurel. I am in search of the test or clinical trial that will seek out the errant cancer cells that too often lie dormant in our bodies until years after the discovery of the tumor and are (somehow) activated and come back to kill you. My Iowa City oncologist, upon meeting with me, said I was the healthiest of the 22 women he had seen that day and added, "Cancer isn't going to kill you. Something else will kill you first." He is also the doctor who told me that, 3 years prior, the cut-off for having chemo was 29, not 25. That encouraged me, as I can consider my onco score to be "borderline" with that reasoning. Of course, I've seen the man 3 times. The first time he was (somewhat) dismissive of my concerns and, when I sent him the extensive litany of everything I had endured in the Illinois Quad Cities up to that point in writing, and asked him for a recommendation for a "good" oncologist in the Quad Cities, he said, "Why do you think everyone from the Quad Cities comes here for treatment?" and laughed. He is also the physician who told me, 3 days before I was to be radiated 33 times at Trinity Hospital in Moline, that Iowa City would not have radiated me at all! On my 2nd visit to see him, he said he was going to do a breast exam on my next (3rd) visit, which was in October. I went in October. No exam. In fact, I barely saw him at all. His "minions" did the work-up and the weighing and the blood pressure and he barely stuck his head in the door and said, "Hi" and left. He seems to be a very knowledgeable doctor and I like him well enough (although not as much as Dr. Uyeki in Austin who literally went to war with the hospital for me) and most of the time I tell myself that everything he has said to me, so far, lines up with the idea I originally had that, although I had b.c., my presentation was generally positive and, as Dr. Goswami at Genesis in Davenport said, "You did everything right. You're going to be fine." But then I remind myself that it was that "magical thinking" that kept me from going to Iowa City immediately (or Chicago, where I also have a place) and caused me to accept my Illinois oncologist's dismissive attitude and unwillingness to "go the extra mile" in ordering an oncotype, for instance, or humoring my surgeon and ordering a ki67. "Knowledge is power" and, given my college major, I felt and was powerless to advocate effectively for myself in the early days of treatment. I (sometimes) regret the chemo I didn't have as a result of my first oncologist's horrible attitude, and sometimes---given the side effects from everything that I have tried---I am glad I slipped through that crack. I wish I had listened to my friend's husband---a PhD from the Netherlands who researches in the area of cancers---and gone to a Top Notch hospital that was "rated" as one of the Best in the Nation, because the treatment and compassion shown me at the hospital nearest my home in Illinois fell down on many of those benchmarks. I was fortunate that we winter in Texas and I fell under the care of a doctor who is truly dedicated to saving his patients and spent time with me to hear me out and answer all my questions. It was particularly noteworthy because there was an ice storm that week and most of his regularly scheduled appointments had to be canceled (people in Austin don't know how to drive if there's ice). He spent over an hour with me. We were working on getting him all the information he needed to "go to war" to get my oncotype for hours, as I recounted which facilities I had had mammograms at over the years, and---ever since being treated very poorly at Trinity Hospital in Moline, Illinois during my 2018 biopsy, I had vowed to never go back there (That joke is on me, because it was the hospital I had to go to for the 33 x-ray treatments and my fears turned out to be more than justified.) Like all hospitals or schools, you can have a good doctor in a bad system, or you can have a bad doctor in a good system.
The verdict, for me, is out on the other parts of their system, since I do think that both my radiologist and my surgeon did their best and performed their duties well. (One could ask if the treatment was "cutting edge," since Iowa City did not agree that radiation was even merited). But the oncologist who has held sway there for years is truly a narcissist who, on paper, knows his stuff, but whose system of dealing with patients needs serious adjustment, for the good of both the patients and himself. I am still surprised that he hasn't been sued over situations like the one I only learned about (from my employees) after I had had it with him and his dismissive attitude.
I hope you will get the care you deserve with your new doctors.