Nick is going to be his own statistic

Dad here....
I wanted to first thank family and friends for your words of encouragement and prayer. The chemo Nick received two weeks ago kicked his butt! Nick has lost over 25 lbs in the last 3 weeks and although he will tell you he's starving he is unalbe to eat anything substantial. The biggest reason is due to the radiation which has killed his saliva gland and is causing mucus build-up in his mouth. Any food or liquid he tries to eat gets covered with this mucus causing him to gag and makes it almost impossible to swallow. Nick is able to drink an 8 oz of a energy drink twice a day and consumes a small amount of tomato soup. Lori read that over 40% of Cancer patients die from poor nutrition and she is currently working with a nutritionist for solutions. I am supprised by the limited amout of information on nutrition and cancer.
Nick will be returning to the hospital on Sunday, June 10th for his third cycle of chemo (five days of treatment) which consists of Vincristine, Ifosfamide and Etoposide. After his forth cycle of chemo the Etoposide will be replaced by Adriamycin for the next four cycles. Adriamycin could not be used while Nick was receiving radiation. I believe this could be the hardest week for Nick because he is so thin and tired sleeping 14-16 hours each day. My hope is that after he completes the radiation on June 14th that we will begin to see Nick eating more and gaining strength and weight.
We met with Dr. Hitchcock (radiation) on Wednesday, June 6th to go over the recent CT and MRI scans and confirmed that the tumor has been responding well to the chemo and radiation. From the scans I would conservatively estimate that the tumor is 20-25% smaller from when we had the first scans performed. My concerns at the moment are Nick's weight loss, risk of infection and the chance that that this tumor could become resistant to treatment. If the tumor becomes resistant then surgery would be performed now rather then later and because of its location would be difficult. My wish is that after the eight cycles of chemo the tumor will be to a more manageable size that would allow for surgery to remove most if not all of the remaining tumor followed by additional chemo to kill any remaining microscopic deposits. The best case would be to completly kill the tumor with chemo and that surgery would not be required. I would like to see Nick off chemo as soon as possible. If anyone has success stories on Alveolar Rhabdomyosarcomas I would love to hear them.
Thanks,
Todd