Tatiana Schlossberg, granddaughter of the iconic former President John F. Kennedy, bravely shared some deeply personal news on Saturday: she has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. According to her doctors, she has been given a prognosis of less than a year to live.
In a heartfelt essay for The New Yorker, the 35-year-old journalist and author opened up about her battle with acute myeloid leukemia, which was first detected last year. Her diagnosis is complicated by a rare genetic mutation called Inversion 3, a condition that affects less than 2% of those suffering from AML.
Schlossberg’s life took an unexpected turn when the disease was discovered shortly after she welcomed her daughter into the world in May 2024. Reflecting on the moment of diagnosis, she expressed disbelief, writing, “I did not – could not – believe that they were talking about me. Just a day prior, I had swum a mile in the pool, nine months pregnant. I wasn’t sick. I didn’t feel sick. I was actually one of the healthiest people I knew.”
Her essay candidly recounts the grueling journey through treatment, detailing the multiple rounds of chemotherapy, two bone marrow transplants, and involvement in two clinical trials. This battle was further complicated in September when she was diagnosed with a form of Epstein-Barr virus that severely impacted her kidneys, requiring her to relearn how to walk.
In a poignant moment of reflection, Schlossberg wrote about a conversation with her doctor during her latest clinical trial. “During the latest clinical trial, my doctor told me that he could keep me alive for a year, maybe,” she shared, highlighting the uncertain path ahead.
“During the latest clinical trial, my doctor told me that he could keep me alive for a year, maybe,” she wrote.
Schlossberg, an environmental journalist, is the second daughter of former US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and designer Edwin Schlossberg. Tatiana Schlossberg and her husband, George Moran, have a 3-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter.
Schlossberg said her siblings – Rose, a filmmaker, and Jack, who earlier this month announced a run for Congress – 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.”
Schlossberg described 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.”
She said the doctors at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, where she was treated, didn’t know whether they would be affected after the Trump administration stripped Columbia University of federal funding. “Suddenly, the health-care system on which I relied felt strained, shaky,” Schlossberg wrote. The university later agreed a deal with the Trump administration to restore the funding.
Schlossberg said she regrets adding to her family’s history of tragedy, which includes John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 and the assassination of her great-uncle, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, in 1968.
“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 writes. “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.”
