I am 58 years old, have had breast cancer in my bones for 3 years, and I take tamoxifen every day. Should I be receiving chemotherapy?
I am assuming the tamoxifen is your first-line antihormonal therapy for hormone receptor-positive breast cancer that has spread to your bones. Patients like you can respond to multiple lines of antihormonal therapy before they go to chemotherapy. It should be encouraging for you to know that women quite frequently live for many years with this type of metastatic breast cancer. When you stop responding to tamoxifen, you can be switched to another form of antihormonal therapy, for example, an aromatase inhibitor if you are postmenopausal (examples would be Aromasin® [exemestane], Femara® [letrozole], or Arimidex® [anastrozole]). It is only after failing to respond to multiple lines of antihormonal therapy, or if the pace of disease progression increases, that your oncologist would consider chemotherapy.
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