I believe after the first few months (with the tablets getting into system) I believe it is common. After around 2 months I seemed to have a lot of hair loss - mainly noticed it in the bath whilst brushing hair to get knots out. I think this was one of the hardest parts of all my treatment - in the bath alone with what looked like a handful of hair.
I feel it goes in stages with it and also try not to focus on it - I think mentally that makes us think it is worse.
Try not to worry - think of the good the tablet is doing with helping to to protect you.
I'm hoping this makes sense - only my mind says one thing and my fingers type whatever they like x
hello everyone its hard to deal with for any woman and we all care about our appearance. I had long hair to the waist back in 1995 and cutting the story short i got breast cancer in 2021 .and i drove myself home in a state of shock it was all very unreal. We have all been there. But I am a vain woman so the worst for me has been losing my hair.
I am one of those "stay young for as long as you can" which I think is good but that hair falling out nearly finished me off.
I have finally logged on here tonight and written something as i met some great Macmillan Volunteers today in Redditch Worcestershire outside Morrisons Grocery doing their bit for Cancer. They really cheered me up. We started singing Beyonce "I'm a Survivor. The name of the Leader of the group was SONIA and she is fab u lus really good person. She made me want to stand up and be a better person.
please forgive me if i did not discuss Letrozole in my first reply but i am new to this and its very late nearly 4 am saturday morning and i am going to bed in a minute, but not before i tell you a little about my experience with Letrozole and that is it made me ache more than anything but no hair loss. We all react differently. If the hair loss continues talk to your Oncologist and maybe she/he will try you on another
feeling lonely - I am on the same timeline as you (West Midlands) and I'm going to go to bed very soon - my eyes are closing as I type this.
With regards to Letrozole we have to consider what it is doing to our body with the hope of stopping/avoiding reoccurrence. Certain BC cells (dependant on type) feed off oestrogen - oestrogen can also be found in our body's 'fat cells' - the letrozole tries to deplete our body of the oestrogen (oestrogen is for want of better words our bodies 'WD40 - our bodies lubricant'.
The Letrozolel takes the oestrogen out of our body to stop any chance of BC coming back and feeding off of it.
Therefore our bodies for want of better words start to age very quickly - taking the lubricants out of joints - hence fingers, knees, ankles feeling stiff and less mobile..... until we start moving them about.
I believe if these side effects are too serve there is an antihistamine that some are advised to take and this seems to ease the achy joints. Its difficult, I decided to go from with 'one day at a time' as I would rather 'try' to prevent any reoccurrence - whilst trying to put up with the ache body. (I don't know how old my body thinks it feels now a days).
I hope this helps a little.
If you ever have trouble sleeping or need company head over to the 'Awake' thread - we all nip in and out of there all the time - for a laugh, a cry, advice, anything really ..... only condition is .... you need to be slightly Loopy haha
