tamoxifen

Brendabreeze

Help!  My new oncologist has suggested that I consider stopping the tamoxifen (20 mg. per day) after 2 or 2 1/2 years.  His recommendation is based on the facts that I had a noninvasive DCIS breast cancer, low grade (cribiform), stage 0, had a lumpectomy, and 33 radiation treatments, and continue to have regular follow-ups.  I don't recall the size of my tumor but think they said less than 4 cm.  I am 63 years old, a petite person, less than 5 feet tall and weigh 103 pounds and am having severe night sweats, hot flashes, chills, fatigue, my sleep is totally interrupted at night.  I rarely sleep more than 5 hours and am wondering what would happen if I decreased my dose to 10 mg per day.  There's never been a study with this dose or a study with women who are below average in size.   The symptoms have seemed to intensify the longer I've been on the drug (which will be 2 years in January 2011).  I am also losing my hair; it is very fine and I don't have a whole lot to lose.  I recently read an observational study done by Dr. Li at the Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington which said that women who took tamoxifen for 5 years may have a 4-fold increase in recurrence with an ER-negative tumor.  I also read an article Understanding Risk and your options which said that sometimes the statement from a study such as "the group that took tamoxifen had 43% fewer invasive breast cancers and 31% fewer non-invasive breast cancers are not actual risks ... the actual risk in this study found that 4% of the women who did not taketamoxifen developed invasive breast cancer compared to 2% who took tamoxifen, a 2% difference over 5 years.  For noninvasive disease the difference was 1%.  That's right the 43% reduction was actually a difference of 2% and the 31% reduction was an actual difference of 1% in five years.  I would really like to hear from others who have struggled with the tamoxifen issue.  Thank you.