Kennedy Granddaughter's Heartbreaking Cancer Revelation
Tatiana Schlossberg, the 35-year-old granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy, has publicly revealed she has been diagnosed with terminal blood cancer and has less than a year to live. The environmental journalist and daughter of former US ambassador Caroline Kennedy shared her devastating prognosis in a deeply personal essay for the New Yorker magazine.
Diagnosis After Childbirth and Treatment Journey
In a cruel twist of fate, doctors discovered Schlossberg had acute myeloid leukaemia just hours after she gave birth to her daughter in May 2024. Medical staff noticed an abnormal white blood cell count while she was in hospital, leading to further tests that confirmed the diagnosis.
Describing her initial disbelief, Tatiana wrote: "I did not — could not — believe that they were talking about me. 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."
Doctors identified a rare mutation called Inversion 3, which cannot be treated effectively with standard therapies. Since her diagnosis, Schlossberg has endured an intensive medical regimen including two bone-marrow transplants, chemotherapy, and blood transfusions.
At the beginning of 2025, she joined a clinical trial for CAR-T-cell therapy, an innovative immunotherapy approach that has shown success against some blood cancers. However, the treatment has not produced the desired results, and her medical team recently informed her they can only keep her alive for "a year, maybe".
Family Impact and Kennedy Legacy
The timing of her essay's publication carries profound significance, appearing on the 62nd anniversary of her grandfather President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas. Tatiana expressed particular anguish about how her illness affects her young children.
"My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids, wouldn't remember me," she wrote. "I didn't ever really get to take care of my daughter—I couldn't change her diaper or give her a bath or feed her, all because of the risk of infection after my transplants."
She also voiced guilt about bringing "a new tragedy" to her mother Caroline Kennedy's life, noting she had always tried to protect her mother from additional pain after the multiple family tragedies she has endured.
The news has reignited discussion about the so-called "Kennedy Curse" that has seen numerous family members meet untimely deaths, including President Kennedy's assassination in 1963, his brother Robert Kennedy's murder in 1968, and John F. Kennedy Jr's fatal plane crash in 1999.
In her essay, Tatiana also criticised her second cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr, currently serving as Secretary of Health and Human Services, for policies she believes threaten cancer research and treatment. She described his cuts to medical research funding and promotion of vaccine scepticism as particularly damaging to patients like herself.
"As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to improve the lives of others," she wrote, "I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers."
The Kennedy family has experienced multiple cancer tragedies, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's death from non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 1994. Tatiana Schlossberg's courageous decision to share her story has brought renewed attention to the urgent need for advanced cancer research and the very personal impact of healthcare policy decisions.
