Aremidex & Lupron shot vs. Tamoxifen

a4runnergrl

Aremidex & Lupron shot vs. Tamoxifen
I am 38, pre-menopausal and had a DMX on June 8th. I had lobular BC (hormone positive, HER2-) in my left breast with clear nodes. My oncologist has given me the above two options for my hormone blocker. Has anyone chosen the Aremidex vs. Tamoxifen. I am leaning towards that due to it having less side effects, but I don't really want to start menopause so early. Oh, I also have the ATM and PALB2 gene mutation.
Hit me with the good, bad and ugly.

Catholic

I am not a doctor.  I am a

I am not a doctor.  I am a caregiver to my wife who took tamoxifen.  I dont know anything about aremidex.

Tamoxifen, in my opinion, is poison.  My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer (her2-positive).  She took tamoxifen
and literally slept most of the day.  She probably slept 16 hours a day and was awake
for 8 hours.  She said she couldnt taste anything and so I made her soup and bread almost every day.  If you go online and
search for tamoxifen, there are websites that talk about the possibility of it causing cancer.  I would argue that the big
side effects of tamoxifen are wild mood swings (my wife went from passive to super aggressive in seconds), depression,
and massive fatigue (she slept all the time day).  

As a caregiver, I am kinda of bitter toward all of chemotherapy.  Maybe chemotherapy is effective.   But I read articles
like this

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-breast-cancer-chemo-study-20180603-story.html

that came out in early 2018 that said many women can avoid chemotherapy and still beat cancer.  In my opinion,
chemotherapy is a business and business was brisk.  I would drive my wife to the clinic and it was packed with people.
The oncologist only gave us one option which was chemotherapy.  Maybe its effective, but 2 years since chemotherapy
and my wife still sleeps on the floor in the basement and she sleeps way too much, my wife still has mood swings,
she is still super angry with the world.

The only good thing I can say about tamoxifen is when she started taking it, the 2 nodes in her breast went from the
size of a quarter and dime respectively to a size of a BB.  It took maybe 2 weeks for the nodes to reduce in size like that.
After chemotherapy, she had surgery to remove those nodes.

My wife was 36 when she was diagnosed with cancer. We came home from the hospital after the birth of our 3rd child and
she moved to the basement fulltime. I had a 6 year old, a 4 year old and a 1-day old to take care of, somebody had to pay the
bills and my wife lived in the basement 23+ hours a day for 2 years.  Eventually her sister visited and got her to go to the
clinic where she was diagnosed with cancer.  Maybe chemotherapy is effective.  Maybe tamoxifen is effective.  But as a
caregiver, I have doubts.

 

Kat5558

Same Decision

a4runnergrl- Did you make a decision and start on the treatments?  I am making the same decision right now, but I have been on Tamoxifen for the last 4 years.  My symptoms have been tolerable.  I just have less energy and libido and have gained some weight, I have some digestive issues, but i guess i dont know for sure if that is from the Tamoxifen or not.  So overall the symptoms have not been terrible, but I am always paranoid and worried about the risk of blood clots, stroke and uterine cancer from Tamoxifen because those are known possible risks with that drug.  My doctor recently recommeded that switch to Aremidex and Lupron because she says there was a study that showed it was more effective and it has less side effects.  But i have had more trouble getting more research on any long term effects of those two drugs and am always concerned about something that I dont know the long term effects are and am worried about the short term effects as well.  If anyone else has done this combo and can give input on the good and bad, that would be great.