Taking a break from AI's - questions -

LindaKR

how did you decide? Did you go back on? Did you have a recurrence?

A little background- my cancer treatments left me disabled (I'm NED though), my joint and muscle pain increased with the use of the AI's, I've tried all three and ended up on exemestane. I hit the 5 year mark this week and saw the MO, where he told me that I'm DEFINITELY in the group that should continue on the AI for at least 10 years. I would like to take a break to see how much of my pain, fatigue, cognitive issues, etc... are due to the AI use, and how much would remain if I stayed off of the AI's. My MO was really against a break at all, but conceded to a 4 week break, and if I insisted an 8 week. My family is freaking that I would even consider taking a break from it (mostly my husband and parents). I feel like I'm between a rock and a hard place. I'm so tired of the SE's, it's exhausting just dealing with them. I've tried everything, except acupuncture, to manage the pain, but not much helps.

Have you taken a break? How did it go? Did you go back on the AI's? Have you had a recurrence? What stage were you (I was Stage 3A with 5/18 nodes)? Was the pain, etc... as bad when you went back on? How did you deal with your family? Thanks so much for any input.

My doctors are always amazed that I haven't had a recurrence, so that makes it that much harder to take a break - maybe it's the only thing keeping the cancer at bay?

CeeQ

I took a break after on it for almost a year. I hated all the SE's. My Onc wanted to see if the SE's were from the Arimidex. They were and I took a nice long 6 week break before starting up again. When I started up this time I took a half pill every day at first and then eased into full dose. It helped a little. SE are still hard to deal with.

I'm 51, had ovaries removed. Triple positive, node negative. Did chemo and rads....