Tatiana Schlossberg, JFK’s granddaughter, reveals she only has a year to live

Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of former President John F. Kennedy, revealed on Saturday she’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer and that doctors believe she only has a year left to live.

In a heartfelt essay, “A Battle with My Blood,” written for The New Yorker, 35-year-old Schlossberg said she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia with a rare mutation back in May 2024, shortly after giving birth to her daughter.

The mutation, known as Inversion 3, is a genetic anomaly found in less than 2% of AML cases, and mostly in older adults.

“A normal white-blood-cell count is around 4,000 to 11,000 cells per microliter. Mine was 131,000 cells per microliter,” she wrote, going on to recall the moment she officially learned of her diagnosis.

“I did not — could not — believe that they were talking about me,” Schlossberg continued. “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.”

In the year and a half since, Schlossberg, the daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg, said she has undergone an intense treatment process, which included several rounds of chemotherapy, two bone marrow transplants and participation in two clinical trials.

Then, in September, she was diagnosed with a form of Epstein-Barr virus, which “blasted” her kidneys and left her needing to 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 also reflected on watching from her hospital bed as her cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was, “despite never having worked in medicine, public health or the government,” confirmed to lead the Department of Health and Human Services — an appointment the Kennedys publicly condemned.

As she spent even more time receiving treatment, she “watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers; slashed billions in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest sponsor of medical research; and threatened to oust the panel of medical experts charged with recommending preventive cancer screenings.”

An environmental journalist and author, Schlossberg is married to George Moran with whom she shares two children — a 3-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter.

She also has two siblings, Rose, a filmmaker, and Jack, who earlier this month announced a run for Congress in New York. Schlossberg noted that her siblings have been helping her care for her children and “have held my hand unflinchingly while I have suffered.”

Schlossberg’s essay was published on the 62nd anniversary of JFK being assassinated in Dallas, Texas. She said she regrets adding to her family’s history of tragedy, which also includes 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 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.”