John F. Kennedy's granddaughter disclosed Saturday that she has terminal cancer, writing in an essay in “The New Yorker” that one of her doctors said she might live for about another year.
Tatiana Schlossberg, the daughter of Kennedy's daughter, Caroline Kennedy, and Edwin Schlossberg, wrote that she was diagnosed in May 2024 at 34. After the birth of her second child, her doctor noticed her white blood cell count was high. It turned out to be acute myeloid leukemia with a rare mutation, mostly seen in older people, she wrote.
Her essay was published on the 62nd anniversary of her grandfather's assassination.
Schlossberg, an environmental journalist, wrote she has undergone rounds of chemotherapy and two stem cell transplants, the first using cells from her sister and the next from an unrelated donor, and participated in clinical trials. During the latest trial, she wrote that her doctor told her “he could keep me alive for a year, maybe.”
Schlossberg said the policies pushed by her cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, could hurt cancer patients like her. Caroline Kennedy urged senators to reject RFK Jr.'s confirmation.
“As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to improve the lives of others, I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers,” she wrote in the essay.
Schlossberg wrote about her fears that her daughter and son won't remember her. She feels cheated and sad that she won't get to keep living “the wonderful life” she had with her husband, George Moran. While her parents and siblings try to hide their pain from her, she said she feels it every day.
“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.”