lung nodes

Hi Everyone, My husband has srcc he has been on sutent for 4.5 rounds 2@37.5 mg  1@50mg 2days on 1day off and now middle of 2ed 50mg every day for 28 on 14 off .  his last ct has shown the nodes in his lungs have gotten larger , from 9cm to 12 ,7to9 ,and many from 4 to 8 cm . Does it take a few rounds of this med to start working to shrink these things . he has another scan in appx. 5 wks if these are showing larger the Dr. may change his med. to nexavar . I have heard such good things about sutent i want to make sure we have given it the time it needs to do the job .PLUS he has almost no side effects other than tired after he takes it so he takes it at nite.

Hi its Railwayman here - sutent has a vairable response in that it depends on the patient how they respond, some do better than others. I have been on 50mg now since March 2007 and it took 3 months for any response to show and another month or so after that to achieve a stable result...... nothing much happened in between - some necrosis, some cystic development - then last year I got another 3 suspect areas of possible growth, its never been decided if it is more metz however the CT of late show mostly dead tissue in those 3 areas - I have had a set back because I got a lung infection on 4.12.08 and have been fighting to get rid of it, most of it has gone but not all so I am having that looked at. I also get a cough now and its suspected that is because of the reflux side effects of the drug so I am having a bronchoscopy to check.....  throughout all of this despite the 3 new areas I have remained on sutent and last visit my oncolgist said did I wish to up the dose to 75mg.  I did not feel well enough but I have decided I would like to go up a notch to say 62.5 see if that does anything for me  - its the best drug around, if it works for you so hang on in there!