Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of former President John F. Kennedy and daughter of Carolinr Kennedy, has revealed she has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Schlossberg announced her diagnosis with an essay in The New Yorkerwhere she stated a doctor told her she has less than a year to live, per CNN.
Schlossberg, 35, wrote that she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia with a rare mutation known as Inversion 3, a genetic anomaly found in less than 2% of AML cases.
She was diagnosed shortly after giving birth to her daughter in May 2024.
“I did not — could not — believe that they were talking about me,” Schlossberg wrote. “I had swum a mile in the pool the day before, nine months pregnant. I wasn’t sick. I didn’t feel sick. I was actually one of the healthiest people I knew.”
Schlossberg underwent grueling treatments, included several rounds of chemotherapy, two bone-marrow transplants and participation in two clinical trials.
In September, Schlossberg was also diagnosed with a form of Epstein-Barr virus, which “blasted my kidneys,” and forced her to learn to walk again.
“During the latest clinical trial, my doctor told me that he could keep me alive for a year, maybe,” she wrote.
Schlossberg is the second daughter of former US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and designer Edwin Schlossberg.
She is an environmental journalist and married to George Moran. They have a 3-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter.
Her siblings — Rose, a filmmaker, and Jack — have been helping raise her children and “have held my hand unflinchingly while I have suffered, trying not to show their pain and sadness in order to protect me from it.”
Jack Schlossberg recently announced he is running for Congress.
Schlossberg wrote about going through treatment as her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was confirmed as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, after “running for President as an Independent, but mostly as an embarrassment to me and the rest of my immediate family.”
Schlossberg added who she regrets adding to her family’s tragic history, which includes John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 and the assassination of her great-uncle, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, in 1968.
The essay was published on the 62nd anniversary of JFK’s assassination.
“For my whole life, I have tried to be good, to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry,” she wrote. “Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family’s life, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
