Maria Shriver has published a deeply emotional message supporting her cousin, Tatiana Schlossberg, who has publicly revealed her struggle with terminal cancer at just 35 years old.
The heartfelt tribute came after Schlossberg, a journalist and mother, detailed her diagnosis in a candid essay for The New Yorker titled 'A Battle With My Blood.'
A Family's Public Support
Shriver, whose mother Eunice Shriver was siblings with Schlossberg's grandfather, President John F. Kennedy, used Instagram to urge her followers to read her cousin's powerful writing.
'If you can only read one thing today, please make take the time for this extraordinary piece of writing by my cousin Caroline’s extraordinary daughter Tatiana,' Shriver wrote in her weekend post.
She described Schlossberg as a 'beautiful writer, journalist, wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend' and praised the essay as an ode to healthcare workers.
Shriver emphasised that the piece serves as 'a reminder to be grateful for the life you are living today, right now, this very minute.'
The Shocking Diagnosis
In her New Yorker article, published on the 62nd anniversary of JFK's assassination, Schlossberg disclosed she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in May 2024.
The revelation came as a complete shock, as she had experienced no symptoms and considered herself 'one of the healthiest people I knew.'
Doctors discovered the disease through routine blood tests following the birth of her second child. A doctor noticed a dangerous imbalance in her white blood cell count.
'A normal white-blood-cell count is around four to eleven thousand cells per microliter. Mine was a hundred and thirty-one thousand cells per microliter,' she wrote.
Schlossberg recalled the moment she received the potential diagnosis: 'It could just be something related to pregnancy and delivery, the doctor said, or it could be leukemia.'
Despite being nine months pregnant, she had been swimming a mile daily and felt perfectly healthy.
Treatment and Prognosis
Schlossberg was eventually diagnosed with a rare mutation called Inversion 3 that could not be cured by standard treatment.
She spent five weeks at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital after giving birth before transferring to Memorial Sloan Kettering for a bone-marrow transplant.
Following gruelling chemotherapy at home, she joined a clinical trial of CAR-T-cell therapy in January, a type of immunotherapy for blood cancers.
In a devastating development, doctors eventually informed Schlossberg that she had approximately one year left to live.
The acute myeloid leukemia with Inversion 3 that she battles is a rare and aggressive form of cancer with a five-year survival rate of just 15-20 percent.
Family Legacy and Personal Strength
Schlossberg expressed concern about adding to her family's well-documented history of tragedies, which includes the assassinations of her grandfather JFK in 1963 and his brother RFK 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.'
She paid tribute to her husband, George Moran, a physician who 'slept on the floor of the hospital' and handled communications with doctors and insurance companies.
Schlossberg also acknowledged her parents, brother, and sister for raising her children and providing constant support during her treatment.
Her mother, Caroline Kennedy, served as US Ambassador to Australia under President Joe Biden from 2022 to 2024 and previously as Ambassador to Japan under Barack Obama.
