Table 3.

Decisions about Continuing or Stopping Aromatase Inhibitors^*

Reasons for continuing
Joint pain manageable	I stuck it out and by last November I rounded a corner and the side effects became more manageable. I take some Advil every now and then, but any pain I have now is very tolerable. The joint pains are never completely gone, but they have settled into being tolerable at least.
Afraid not to take	I'm afraid to stop taking it. What should we all do, I feel I’ll never be who I was before breast cancer...I’m not ready to stop living. I hurt, ache, swell, pain, shuffle, have significant joint pain, have cognitive issues, and feel like I'm 80 when I'm mid-50's. But I'm also so afraid of the breast cancer that I shuffle alongside of everyone, like you do.
Benefit outweighs risk	Like someone said in one of the other posts, I can live with the joint pain as long as it's helping to keep the cancer from recurring. The way I look at it, at 53 years old, I was likely to get arthritis anyway, and any discomfort I may have as a result of treatment is well worth prolonging my life. I have no regrets at all. I do have some joint pain on arimidex but it's far preferable to a recurrence of course so I'm happy to continue taking it.
Reasons for stopping
	I cannot live this way with the pain. I can barely function at my job and I need to work. Last night at this site I found 13 other ladies with the same problem. I was so happy to read I wasn't the only one and that my intuition was right. It was the meds. Now my oncologist wants me to start aromasin. When I see her Wednesday I'm telling her no way. I took Arimidex for 10 months and recently stopped it. I was having unbearable joint pain and felt like I was 90. My joints feel so much better now. I had joint and bone pain with Arimidex and decided no more drugs even though I have one more year to go. I figured the small survival advantage was not worth all the side effects. I feel great...hope I made the right decision. I started taking aromasin in Nov of 2006. I stopped taking it because the side effects just weren't worth it. My theory is there isn't enough info about long term effects. Just my opinion. I'm too young to feel so bad!
Reluctance to start	As for the joint pain, I'm still suffering with joint pain since stopping Arimidex in August. Now my doctor wants me to try Tamoxifen and after reading the side effects I'm reluctant to take any meds at all. I am unsure about taking Arimidex after reading all the side effects. I already have joint pain as I have arthritis.
Advice
	If you don't do well on one, there are others you can try. I never thought a medicine could make you feel so bad. But for every one of me, there is someone else who has no trouble. It's good to know how different people react, so you know what to share with your doc. Try it for yourself, don't let others scare you off, everyone is different. Don’t give up, just allow some time for your body to adjust. It’s the most effective drug we postmenopausal folks can take. Give it some adjustment time, at least a month or more and see how the effects are then. But talk to your doctor just the same.

^*These quotes have been slightly altered to protect the authors and to prevent them from being discovered online