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Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of former US president John F. Kennedy, has terminal cancer and less than a year to live, the 35-year-old has revealed.
In an essay in The New Yorker on Saturday, Schlossberg disclosed that she had acute myeloid leukaemia, a diagnosis she received shortly after giving birth to her second child with husband George Moran in May last year.
Tatiana Schlossberg’s essay that revealed her cancer diagnosis was published on the 62nd anniversary of her grandfather’s assassination.Credit: AP
Doctors noticed after delivery that she had an abnormally high white blood cell count.
“It could just be something related to pregnancy and delivery, the doctor said, or it could be leukaemia,” she wrote.
“‘It’s not leukaemia’, I told George. ‘What are they talking about?’”
Further tests revealed a diagnosis of leukaemia with a rare mutation known as Inversion 3, a genetic anomaly found in less than 2 per cent of cases and more commonly seen in older patients or first responders. Schlossberg had just turned 34.
Prince William and Caroline Kennedy, along with her children John and Tatiana Schlossberg, tour the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston in 2022.Credit: AP
“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 is the second daughter of Edwin Schlossberg and Caroline Kennedy, who served as the US ambassador to Australia from 2022 to 2024. Kennedy announced in September last year, four months after Schlossberg received her diagnosis, that she would leave her post and return to the United States regardless of the election results.
“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,” Schlossberg wrote in her essay.
“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.”
Caroline Kennedy served as the US ambassador to Australia until November 2024.Credit: James Brickwood
Tragedy has followed the Kennedy family since John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. His brother, Bobby, was shot while campaigning in 1968. JFK’s son, John F. Kennedy Jr, died in a plane crash in 1999 that also killed his wife, Caroline Bessette Kennedy.
Schlossberg, an environmental journalist, has been receiving treatment including a bone marrow transplant, chemotherapy and blood transfusions, and has joined two clinical trials.
“During the latest clinical trial, my doctor told me that he could keep me alive for a year, maybe,” she wrote. “My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids, wouldn’t remember me.”
She has been leaning on her sister, Rose, a filmmaker, and her TikTok influencer brother, Jack, to help raise her children. Jack, who has built a social media profile based on bizarre rants, announced last week that he is running for Congress.
Jack Schlossberg will run for Congress in the state of New York.Credit: AP
Schlossberg said she and her family had been embarrassed by her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy, a vaccination sceptic, running for president. He was confirmed as secretary for the Department of Health as she was undergoing treatment.
The Trump administration stripped federal funding from Columbia University, where she received treatment at the medical centre, but has since agreed to restore it.
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