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Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of former President John F. Kennedy, shared a poignant update on Saturday, disclosing that she has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Medical professionals have informed her that her prognosis is less than a year.
In a heartfelt essay published in The New Yorker, the 35-year-old detailed her diagnosis, which occurred last year. She is battling acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with a rare genetic mutation known as Inversion 3, a condition seldom seen in just 2% of AML cases.
Schlossberg’s cancer was detected shortly after she welcomed her daughter in May 2024.
Expressing her disbelief, Schlossberg wrote, “I couldn’t accept that they were referring to me. Just a day earlier, I had swum a mile while nine months pregnant. I felt healthy and vibrant, perhaps the healthiest I’ve ever been.”
Throughout her essay, Schlossberg chronicles the arduous journey of her treatment, which has included multiple chemotherapy sessions, two bone marrow transplants, and participation in clinical trials. Additionally, she was diagnosed with a form of the Epstein-Barr virus in September that severely affected her kidneys, necessitating she relearn how to walk.
“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.”
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