SAN ANTONIO – It is a feat six years in the making.
KSAT has been reporting on Debi Nieto and her son Noah Adams since 2000, when he was a teenager going through cancer treatment.
Adams had his leg amputated and started his own nonprofit organization, the Stay Strong Foundation.
“It feels like yesterday, you know, that just yesterday sitting in a hospital room and getting that diagnosis,” Nieto said.
Then Nieto invited KSAT to her home, where she had started her own gig, sewing zippers into T-shirts for children receiving chemotherapy through ports.
Later that year, Nieto herself was diagnosed with cancer, and she opened up to KSAT about her grit and strength.
Now, she is showing off the new, powerful book she wrote and published herself. The book is called “Grace in the Fire: A Cancer Mom Turned Fighter.”
Reciting an emotional excerpt from her book, she read, “I leaned against the doorway and whispered, ‘I never wanted this for you. I never wanted you to be sick.’ He didn’t cry, he didn’t panic, he didn’t sink. Instead, he looked straight into my soul and said, ‘But mama, you wanted me to be strong, right?’”
That part was about Adams’ battle. Her own battle started just two years after he was declared in remission.
“I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which is a blood and bone marrow cancer. It is treatable, but it’s incurable. So, you know, it falls into the terminal cancer category,” Nieto said.
Nieto’s days have been tough since then.
“Immunotherapy, chemotherapy. I had a stem cell transplant in February of 2024. I’m still taking chemo pills daily. It crept up back last April. My numbers didn’t look too good, so they started me on a need regimen. That’s going well now,” she said.
The eight-year Army veteran will never hear the word remission as her son did, but that has not stopped her.
“Never thought that title would come after my name, “author,” Nieto said, beaming.
The book detailing her journey includes pictures of each step in the process.
“This one where my hairdresser, he shaved my head. With cancer, there is very little you can control, and that was the only thing I could control when I could lose my hair,” Nieto said.
Time after time, Nieto has chosen positivity, which is one of the messages she wants to send with her book.
“Whatever your diagnosis is, whatever your situation is, whatever it is that interrupted your life, that’s not who you are. You’re more than that. Cancer is definitely my diagnosis, but it’s definitely not who I am,” she said.
The book goes on sale on Amazon on Feb. 1.
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