Tatiana Schlossberg, daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg and granddaughter of John F. Kennedy, revealed her terminal cancer diagnosis in an essay published by The New Yorker on Saturday.
The 35-year-old man has acute myeloid leukemia, with a rare mutation called Inversion 3.
Schlossberg said she was diagnosed on May 25, 2024, the same day she gave birth to her second child. Hours after giving birth, her doctor noticed her abnormally high white blood cell count and moved her to another floor for more tests.
She initially ruled out the possibility of cancer and was stunned when the diagnosis was confirmed, saying she considered herself “one of the healthiest people” she knew.
“This could not be my life,” he wrote.
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a cancer that begins in the bone marrow and quickly passes into the blood, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS). General symptoms include weight loss, fatigue, fever, night sweats, and loss of appetite.
According to the ACS, there are several subtypes of AML that are important in determining a person’s prognosis. The Schlossberg subtype, an inversion of chromosome 3, is listed as an unfavorable abnormality of AML on the ACS website.
Schlossberg spent five weeks at Columbia Presbyterian after her daughter’s birth before her blast cell count decreased enough for her to begin chemotherapy at home. His care was later moved to Memorial Sloan Kettering, where he underwent a bone marrow transplant and spent more than 50 days before returning home for further treatment.
In January, Schlossberg joined a clinical trial for CAR T-cell therapy. She wrote that much of the treatment unfolded from her hospital bed when her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was nominated and confirmed as secretary of health and human services, a role for which she believes he was unqualified.
Schlossberg thanked her husband and family for their support and for the countless days spent at her bedside.
“My parents and siblings have also been raising my children and sitting in my various hospital rooms almost every day for the last year and a half,” she added.
His brother, Jack Schlossberg, announced earlier this month that he will run for Congress. The 32-year-old is running for the New York City seat long held by Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, who announced in September that he will not seek re-election.
Despite all of Tatiana Schlossberg’s treatments, she said, the cancer kept coming back.
“During the last clinical trial, my doctor told me it could keep me alive for maybe a year,” he wrote. “My first thought was that my children, whose faces live permanently inside my eyelids, wouldn’t remember me.”
Schlossberg now does her best to be in the present with her children.
A writer by profession, Schlossberg was for several years a reporter for the science section of the New York Times, where she covered climate change and the environment.
Schlossberg’s essay comes on the 62nd anniversary of his grandfather’s assassination, adding his diagnosis to a long history of tragedy within the Kennedy family.
John F. Kennedy’s son, John F. Kennedy Jr., and his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, died in a plane crash in 1999.
Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy Sr., assassinated in 1968, died in October 2024 from complications of a stroke. She was 96 years old.
