No More Drugs

To increase my chances of keeping my cancer at bay, I'd been taking Tamoxifen for the past eight years. I'd done pretty well on it, but since I've officially reached menopause, it was no longer an effective deterrent, so my oncologist switched me to Arimidex, one of the aromatase inhibitors, several months ago.

It was not a happy switch. There's a long list of negative side effects with the drugs, and before long, I was experiencing a lot of them. Swollen and achy joints, unhappy digestive system, uneasy sleep, almost daily migraines (mild ones, but still!). The worst part was the depression. I've struggled with it for years, but have learned some great coping tools and usually manage to keep it more-or-less under control. Not this time. I went down, down and down some more. Enough so, that when I went in to see the doc for a checkup, I planned to ask her for an antidepressant prescription.

When I got to my appointment, she asked how I was, and I responded, "Whiny." I then proceeded to go through my list of woes, hoping she'd have some options to help alleviate the worst of the side effects. To my surprise, when I'd finished, rather than telling me to keep bucking up, she said, "I think you've had enough. You've stayed on the drugs for eight years. While ten is the gold standard, few of my patients ever make it past seven. You've reached your toxicity tipping point."

And with that, I was done.

While I'm thrilled to begin to see what life is like without drugs whacking out my hormones, I also find myself a bit apprehensive. The drugs were the magic potion that kept my cancer away. If I no longer take them, does that mean my cancer will come back?

It might. And, I might get hit by the margarita truck tomorrow.

Today is the only day I have; I will do my best to make it a good one.

It's been a couple of weeks since I stopped taking the drugs, and I have already seen some improvements. My poor little sausage fingers are much better, sometimes I can actually curl them into a fist again. My digestive system is slowly recovering its equilibrium, and my appetite is returning. The headaches have largely abated (whew!). Sadly, I'm still not sleeping well, but this is where I pause and give thanks I no longer need to get up at a certain time to get to work each day. I'm still struggling to climb out of my depression hole, but at least I've managed to halt the downward spiral.

It'll take another month or two (at least) for my body to regain its balance. It'll be interesting to see where I land. I know it won't be back where I started - eight years is a long time, and I have a feeling that I'll discover that some of the things I'd been blaming the drugs for will actually turn out to be normal signs of aging. 

Despite everything, I still can't quite manage to think of myself as a cancer survivor. Rather, I give thanks each day I finish NED, with No Evidence of the Disease. So far, so good.