Hi Malro

I'm sorry I cant help specifically about Sunitinib and Kidney cancer but my wife had peritoneal cancer and was on various chemotherapys for 3 years.

I think tiredness is a symptom of most chemotherapys and hand and foot skin reactions is a listed side effect of Sunitinib. My wife certainly had increasing tiredness - difficult to seperate that from the disease and the treatment and suffered from tingling in hands and feet with nerve damage.

Having a quick look at Sunitinib its toxicity is said to be significant but manageable.

As for it being given until it stops working the way we used to look at it was that basically you were fighting Darwin. The cancer has a mutating DNA and it grows and mutates quicker that the rest of your body. Many of the Chemos use that because they basically are poisons - the first one was derived from mustard gas! they attack the body and the cancer but because the cancer is so much more active it comes off worse.

Problem is that as I say you are fighting Darwin and as the cancer mutates some of the cells happen to be immune to the particular Chemotherapy agent, Then you're killing off the ones that are sensitive to it but the ones that aren't start to become the majority until the cancer is immune to the chemo. How long that takes nobody can tell it all comes down to how long it takes the cancer to evolve and adapt.

I know that my wife had good days and bad days and you just have to grab the good days when yuo can and make the most of them and just be there for them on the bad days.

Yes it is overwhelming sometimes you just have to take each day as it comes and soldier on.

Best of Luck