Jon Batiste, 35, Tests Positive for COVID: Could Grammy Winner Be Putting His Wife Suleika Jaouad, 33, At Risk As She Battles Cancer?

Earlier this year, Jon Batiste got “secret married” to his partner Suleika Jaouad, author of the the New York Times bestselling memoir, Between Two Kingdoms. 

Jaouad first battled leukemia in her early 20s, and again today in her early 30s. Jaouad had a bone marrow transplant for treatment for her most recent bout of cancer. A bone marrow transplant is a treatment used for some cancers, like leukemia. It replaces bone marrow with healthy cells; it is also called a "stem cell transplant."

Dr. Nina Shah, a SurvivorNet adviser and hematologist at the University of California San Francisco, explains in an earlier interview how to best understand leukemia. "One cell got really selfish and decided that it needed to take up all the resources of everybody else, and in doing so, took up space and energy from the rest of the body," Dr. Shah says.

"In general having a blood cancer means that your bone marrow is not functioning correctly," she explains. "And when your bone marrow doesn't function correctly it means that you can have something happen to you like anemia. Or you can have low platelets, which makes it possible for you to bleed easily. Or your immune system is not functioning correctly."

Speaking with Vogue magazine in an interview earlier this year, the Princeton University graduate said of her cancer, "I, today, am actually doing well. I believe I'm on day plus-32 post-transplant and I've been out of the hospital for almost exactly a week," she tells the magazine. She says she learned her illness was back in November of last year.

She says, "It's so incredibly rare, I think less than 1% of patients, according to my doctor, relapse 10 years after a bone marrow transplant. When my oncologist called me, she was in tears. Not just my world, but my partner's world and my family's world completely imploded. We had a weekend to pack up all of our things, to find temporary homes for our dogs, to find a borrowed apartment in New York City and for me to begin chemo."

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COVID Vaccines & Cancer

If you're a person battling cancer, like Jon Batiste’s wife, it's very important to get the Covid-19 vaccine, as some cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy, may blunt the immune system. Speak with your doctor about getting the vaccine if you haven't already.

Dr. Vincent Rajkumar, a doctor from the Mayo Clinic, spoke in an earlier interview about the importance of getting vaccinated if you have cancer. He also assures people of vaccine safety, saying, "It is very safe and there is no increased risk to you just because you have cancer."

"As long as you are feeling well, just go ahead with the vaccine whenever it's offered to you. Sometimes even on the same day if you are going to the clinic to get a small dose of chemotherapy and they're giving the vaccine, just get it, there's really no major problem," Dr. Rajkumar says. "The only people for whom we are saying to delay by a month or two are patients who have had a stem cell transplant because we have wiped out (the patients' immune system). And so you want to wait until some of the recovery happens so when you give the vaccine, they have an immune response."

5 COVID-19 Vaccine Questions Answered by Expert Physician

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