Loss of Libido – Frantic Shanti

A Year on Letrozole

Warning: This is going to be a bit of a gripe-fest…

This coming week marks my one-year anniversary of taking letrozole, an aromatase inhibitor designed to reduce the risk of recurrence of my breast cancer by reducing the levels of estradiol (precurser to estrogen) in the body.

Aromatase inhibitors are problematic. Significant numbers of women discontinue taking these medications prior to the planned end of treatment, and this is due mainly to side effects (Kadakia et al., 2016, The Oncologist).

A year into this, I can completely relate. When I was on tamoxifen, the side effects were less well-defined. With letrozole, they’re unmistakable.

Most infuriating are the physical ones, especially the arthralgia (joint pain). I’m an ardent exerciser, regularly engaging in rowing, lifting weights and interval training. Arthralgia puts obvious limitations on my workouts. Maintaining muscle is harder and as a result I need to work out more intensely. So I push it, but it feels like I’m treading water with an anvil tied around my neck. I know that working out and building muscle is going to be tough at age 54, but I question the benefits of a drug purported to lessen the chance of cancer recurrence when it’s affecting my ability to engage in something (exercise) which is strongly associated with a decreased risk of cancer (Cannioto et al., 2020, JCNI). It doesn’t seem to make sense.

No matter how tired I am in the evening, some nights are restless and NOT refreshing.

Another effect of the drop in estrogen is fatigue, which can be intense by the end of the day. Then, okay, I go to bed early, but my sleep quality is hit-or-miss. Sometimes I experience weird “restless leg” symptoms. This is a “gripping” or aching sensation that can only be aleviated by moving my legs. Any position that feels comfortable at the moment soon won’t, and I do an awkward dance as I move around in bed. Not a great recipe for falling asleep. Luckily this doesn’t occur every night, but when it does, it impacts the next workday.

As a side note, I usually take magnesium supplements before bed, not only to aid in muscle recovery, but also to help with sleep. I don’t know what my nights would be like if I didn’t take them regularly, and I’m not willing to find out.

Over time, the pain in my joints and limbs has increased. It’s most pronounced in my fingers, toes, ankles, hips and elbows, and I’m generally most achey as I’m going to sleep and when I wake in the morning. Sometimes it’s bad enough that it wakes me at night–usually a burning sensation in my fingers and toes–but that happens only occasionally.

By the way, in case you’re wondering if that’s bone metastases instead of side effects, trust me, I’ve already thought about that. I’ve also done the obligatory googling, and while I’ll let my oncologist know about the pain at my next appointment, I don’t think it’s metastasis. These symptoms are just your garden-variety letrozole side effects.

One of the most striking physical side effects (that I could actually show to other people!) didn’t kick in until about Month 8 of taking the letrozole, when the stiffness in my fingers escalated to the point where several of them would lock up in the morning. If I made a fist and then attempted to open my hand, a few of my fingers would “stick” and, as I continued to try to straighten them, they’d suddenly sproing open.

I’ve already mentioned the physical fatigue, but there’s a deeper, darker side to this, which I’ve written about previously. The rest of my family — husband and two teenagers — are up and lively in the evening as I’m dragging my sorry butt to bed. I feel a strong disconnect from them. More specifically, I feel old, which is not surprising, since decreased estrogen is associated with ageing. I feel like I don’t belong with my family anymore, like there’s a distance between us. So, I’m taking a medication to help prevent a possible recurrence of my breast cancer, but the price I’m paying for that reduced risk seems pretty steep.

The disconnect from my family makes me feel alone…and old.

Adding to that feeling of disconnect is the sudden drop in my libido. Perhaps this would have been easier to take if I were single, or divorced (which is the direction it sometimes feels this is heading). I’ve already written about the issue here so I won’t rehash all my frustration. Suffice it to say that while sexual side effects are mentioned in the scientific literature and in doctors’ offices, they’re not really talked about from the standpoint of the effect they have on relationships. This is one of those intangible issues that is difficult to quantify and even more difficult to discuss.

There are also cognitive problems that involve (1) concentration, (2) focus and (3) memory. Listen, I need all three of those for work. I cannot express how crippling it feels trying to learn new convoluted financial software when my brain simply refuses to cooperate. Truly, taking a mindfulness break helps immensely, but it simply doesn’t solve the problem. It just keeps me from putting my fist through my monitor.

Ah, yes, irritability. Put that down as another side effect.

This would be me. If I were a baboon. And used the Oracle Financial System.

So I’m a year into letrozole and I’m searching through the scientific literature to see what, truly, are the rates of recurrence for women who discontinue the medication prematurely, and what other factors come into play in terms of reducing risks.

My goal is to get through at least five years of combined endocrine therapy (tamoxifen and letrozole), and I’m already more than halfway there, having finished two years of tamoxifen before I got on the aromatase inhibitor train. I mean, only two more years of this.

Maybe I’ve hit the high mark of side effects and they won’t get any worse? Maybe?

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Note: the side effects I’ve mentioned are not the only ones that occur with aromatase inhibitors. These are simply the big ones for me. Before you start any treatment, make sure you discuss with your oncologist what sort of adverse reactions you can expect and what you can do to mitigate them.

Look, Ma! No Libido!

This is a delicate issue that isn’t talked about enough. It’s time we brought it out into the open.

Based on the reactions that I’ve received from some health professionals, I believe that loss of libido is a highly underreported side effect of aromatase inhibitors, medications that are prescribed to suppress estrogen production in women who have or have had hormone receptor-positive breast cancer; aromatase inhibitors are generally given only to postmenopausal women. Sure, low libido is listed as a possible side effect on the informational insert that you get with the pill bottle, but its mention feels like an afterthought. The reality is, AROMATASE INHIBITORS STOMP OUT YOUR FREAKIN’ LIBIDO.

Why don’t we talk about this more? This may be due to the average age at diagnosis of breast cancer being the mid-60s, give or take. I’m willing to wager that many women of this age don’t feel very comfortable discussing intimate details of their personal life with (especially male) oncologists.

Couple that with the fact that as much as we’re trying to change as a society, postmenopausal women are still not valued very highly. Youth equates to beauty, and women continue to be judged by their appearance. Even the inhabitant of the White House has reflected the notion that an “older” woman wouldn’t be a fit companion for a high-powered man, presumably because he deserves “better”.

So let me stress, everyone deserves the opportunity to engage in meaningful intimate relationships. As we get older, sexual intimacy may not have the same prominence in our interactions, but it is still an important part of bonding.

This is a perfect example of a “quality-of-life” issue. It can’t be measured by a laboratory test, but it’s something very valuable. When the medical profession obsesses about breast cancer survival rates, and when the pharmaceutical industry develops even more-effective medications, those lives saved can be counted as numbers. But sadly, a drop in desire for intimacy, or a similar quality-of-life marker, can’t be measured in the same way and, therefore, doesn’t bear the same weight in decision-making.

Loss of libido can lead to a decrease in perceived quality-of-life

It rankles me when some of these complicated low-hormone effects experienced by women taking aromatase inhibitors are written off as simply symptoms of natural menopause, as if the cancer survivor is making a big ado about nothing. As someone who was premenopausal when originally diagnosed with breast cancer, and then chemically forced through menopause via chemotherapy and tamoxifen, I can assure you, none of this is what my body would “normally” be doing. The change from what I was to what I am is really striking.

I often think, if a medication could reduce the risk of cancer, but you would have to sacrifice your left arm for it to work, it probably wouldn’t sell well. But if the cost weighs heavily on quality-of-life, taking a toll on intimate relationships, that’s perfectly acceptable? Women who stop aromatase inhibitors are called “non-compliant”, as if they’re foolish and don’t know what’s good for them. But maybe doctors need to consider more than just statistics when it comes to treatment recommendations.

So why aren’t we forcing this conversation with more medical professionals? It’s easy to write prescriptions for medications. It’s much more uncomfortable to navigate the complexities of how intimacy suffers from them. The level of detriment will differ from person to person, as will the value of an intimate experience. While oncologists work to improve the length of our lives, as cancer survivors we need to apply pressure in the other direction, to make sure that their decisions are also informed by the quality of our lives.

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It’s important to note that while libido takes a huge hit from hormone-suppressing medications, it’s not even the main reason women stop aromatase inhibitors. There are other side effects that make the medicines difficult to continue. If you are having troublesome side effects, then tell your doctor as soon as possible. If your doctor doesn’t listen and doesn’t offer ways of alleviating your complaints, it’s time to find another doctor.

Invisible Effects: Libido, Where Art Thou?

I was warned about this. I mean, where do you want to start counting the reasons for libido to take a hike? Anxiety of a cancer diagnosis, fear of losing breasts (the societal hallmarks of femininity), chemotherapy (which pretty much kills everything), tamoxifen (blocks estrogen, so there go the hormones)…

Out of all the things touched by breast cancer and its treatment, this is one of the most personal that not only affects the patient but also the one you love, because it throws a monkey wrench into your relationship. As with many of these “invisible effects” of cancer, this one is not discussed enough, but really should be.

A marriage that is strong should survive this. A marriage that is new or rocky may take more damage. Married your wife mainly because she had long blonde hair, lovely breasts and looked good in your Porsche? Uh-oh. Stories circulate about the high percentage of divorces that result from lack of adherence to the “in sickness and in health” part of marriage vows. I’ve read that those statistics are inflated, and yet, it’s hard to ignore confirmed instances of, “he didn’t find me attractive anymore,” or “she no longer wanted to have sex with me.”

Emotional isolation is a real possibility following cancer treatment if you’re not communicating effectively with your significant other.

In my experience, all the effects of cancer dropped onto your libido won’t necessarily squash it into oblivion. But they do add a degree of difficulty in maintaining intimacy. There is nothing normal about having cancer, and so it’s not surprising that it wrings the “normal” out of a marriage. Communication is critical, and if things are going to break down, I think that’s where it’ll happen.

It’s not that there wasn’t desire throughout my cancer treatment. It’s that it was hard to Tetris sex into the chemo schedule, when I was dead tired and feeling like the lining of my GI tract had sloughed off. Hubby was taking care of the kids and I was lucky if I could make it to the toilet by myself. Perhaps desire was there, but any available energy was better utilized for self-care.

Chemotherapy left me feeling very “neuter”, in that gray area between female and male. Being scrawny and bald didn’t help. I didn’t look feminine and felt even less so. My reality was fuzzy, as if I had one foot in this world and one in the next, which wasn’t the greatest recipe for firing up desire. We went through about a year of unintentional celibacy and that took a lot of discussion to patch up.

Now in survivorship, sexual intimacy has taken a backseat to the rest of life. I mean, I’m still alive, so I’d better make the most of it, and languishing in bed is not where I want to be. I’ve spent enough time supine. Weekdays I need to get the kids ready for school and get myself to work. On weekend mornings, there are workouts to do, posts to write, meditations to finish, coffee to brew. If there are insufficient hormones to drive me into the arms of my beloved, then he’s left to get a few extra hours of sleep while I get on with life. Once in a while, we reconnect, but we’re behind the curve on this.

At the same time, intimacy is an inextricable part of a healthy long-term relationship. I am not giving up on finding my mojo again, but as with everything in cancer recovery, it’s going to take time.