Finishing Zoladex
Finishing Zoladex I am 38 and have just finished three years on Zoladex. I am still on tamoxifen and wondered if anyone had been through the same process. My onc says that there is a 80% chance periods will return and that the process takes different amounts of time for different people. Is it like puberty all over again? Does anyone have any tips?
Hi Sally,
I’m afraid I don’t know, but I do have a question for you, if that’s ok! I’ve just started Zoladex and am feeling pretty exhausted. By the end of my working day all I feel like doing is curling up and falling asleep (and I’m also starting to feel pretty down). Did you have any side effects similar to this, and if so, did they get better with time?
Thanks
Emma
For Emma and Sally HI Emma and Sally
I am sorry that i cannot help with the zoladex questions as the onc decided it was best for me to have my ovaries removed, I am on tamoxifen and just wanted to reply to Emma and say that having that incredible fatigue may not be related to the zoladex but is as a result of all of the treatment for breast cancer. I was amazed at how tired i was after i started back to work. It will get better Emma but it does take time. Your body has been through so much and it needs time to heal. I have been back to work for months now and still have the same fatigue that you are talking about. It has gotten a bit better but i still have to come home from work and rest before i can get on with other things. Emma, you are not alone with this fatigue. Please take it easy and let us know how you are doing. I hope that Sally gets the info about zoladex. Sally my friend Jakki (Daisypink) is on zoladex and is also young. If you asked her on our thread Karen & Co i am sure she would reply to you.
Hope this helps
karen
For Karen Karen,
Many thanks for your kind response. It (kind of) helps to know that other people’s experiences are similar. I think I’m finding it hard to deal with the amount of treatment my body has been bombarded with and its side effects. Before treatment I was fit, healthy (at least I thought so) and was full of energy and now I’m not. I think all this would be easier to accept if I’d felt the effects of cancer (not that I would have ever wished that of course) before treatment. I catch myself thinking: “all this because of a tiny little lump” and it still, nearly a year on, feels so surreal!
Take care and I hope the fatigue continues to get better for you.
Emma
For Emma Hi Emma
You are so right and i long for the life i had before breast cancer. Will life ever return to normal and will we be able to go out and do all of the things we did before diagnosis? I am not sure but i used to be able to work all day then go to the gym and then out in the evening and not think anything about it. Now it is home from work and into my pajamas and then resting and relaxing. I feel like an 80 year old instead of the young person that i know i am.
Take care and hope you are feeling less fatigued soon
karen
Fatigue Emma,
I totally agree that most of the fatigue you are suffering is due to the treatment - it really takes it out of you. It does get better with time though. The only thing I would add is that I noticed my body seemed to have problems balancing itself for a long while after starting Zoladex. The most common symptom that everyone mentions is the hot flushes, but it was more than that. Early on in the treatment, I used to feel like I had adrenal rushing around my body in the evenings. After a while, I used to get a ‘hollow’ feeling late in the evening - a real feeling of exhaustion. My hot flushes settled down quite quickly after starting treatment, but this hollow feeling stayed with me. It has only gone now I have come off the Zoladex. Having said this, I think the hollow feeling was far better than PMT, so please don’t feel worried. In my experience, Zoladex is OK after the first few months. Quite agree though that the whole thing seems surreal. I went from having a baby to treatment that brought on menopause in less that 6 months. I partly wrote my posting because I want someone to say ’ it’ll be OK, you will go back to normal again’.
Sally
Hi Sally Hi Sally,
I was diagnosed with oestrogen-positive BC in 2003 when I was 41.
After a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy I was put on zoladex and tamoxifen. I remained on these drugs for two years. My oncologist suggested that I came off both at the same time, rather than continuing with the tamoxifen for another three years, because new evidence showed no benefit in continuing. This might be worth checking with your oncologist.
So, I stopped both drugs at the end of November 2005, just before my 44th birthday. I didn’t have a period until August 2006 when I had the heaviest period I’ve ever had. I then had a light period in October 2006, followed by a normal period in February 2007 and a normal period exactly 28 days later in March 2007.
I suspect that, hormonally-speaking, things are getting back to normal.
Hope that this information is useful.
Best wishes,
Sue