NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Grammy-winning musician Jon Batiste recently described his wife and author Suleika Jaouad's battle with leukemia as a "blessing" that has made them even more appreciative of what they have as a couple.
"It's a miracle," the former 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' bandleader remarked on daytime talk show 'Sherri' on Monday, September 25.
He said, "She's doing so much better after her transplant."
Jaouad who is still receiving treatment, recently posted a picture of herself in a hospital bed at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York on Instagram. The picture was shot by her husband.
She captioned the picture of her and Lizzie Presser, a journalist, playing a word game, "Still winning."
What happened to Suleika Jaouad?
Jaouad, the best-selling memoirist 'Between Two Kingdoms', underwent a bone marrow transplant in February 2022, shortly after the pair secretly married.
However, Jaouad, 35, said that Batiste, 36, told her that her condition had no bearing on his proposal.
"He said to me, 'I just want to be very clear, I'm not proposing to you because of this diagnosis. It's taken me a year to design your ring. So, just know this timing has nothing to do with it," Jaouad stated.
"But what I do want you to know is that this diagnosis doesn't change anything. It just makes it all the clearer to me that I want to commit to this and for us to be together,'" as per People.
She further added, "But once we realized we had this tiny window before the bone marrow transplant, we decided to go for it."
Inside Suleika Jaouad and Jon Batiste's 'tiny' and 'perfect' marriage
In addition to having a "tiny" and "perfect" wedding, Batiste and Jaouad were able to promptly obtain their marriage certificate. They also stated that they "used bread ties" as opposed to traditional wedding bands.
"And I'll tell you, we walked into that bone marrow transplant unit on cloud nine," Jaouad noted, "We were so happy, so brimming with love and positivity from this beautiful evening that we'd had. And I really believe that that carried us through."
"When you get that close to the veil of life, you realize how much really matters," the Grammy-winning performer said on September 25, Monday.
He further added, "You realize how much we have in the moment, and that’s really all we have. This. So, as wild as it is to say, I think this season has been a blessing to us."
When was Suleika Jaouad diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia?
Jaouad was just 22 years old when she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a kind of leukemia that affects the blood and bone marrow.
She was given a 35% chance of survival, per an interview with Health magazine from March 2021.
According to Batiste, his wife is "doing great" despite her treatments and recently had the chance to go paragliding over the Swiss Alps. "We were able to do things this year that last year were impossible," he stated.
He added, "She has a level of appreciation for life and being in the world that is profound. Everything is going as great as it can go, and we just pray that it continues."
