Tatiana Schlossberg — granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy — has revealed she has less than a year to live after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.
The 35-year-old journalist and mother of two shared the heartbreaking news in a deeply personal essay published Saturday in The New Yorker. She disclosed she is battling acute myeloid leukemia, made even more aggressive by a rare genetic mutation.
“Maybe my brain is replaying my life now because I have a terminal diagnosis, and all these memories will be lost,” she wrote, reflecting on her thoughts since receiving the devastating news.
Schlossberg explained that doctors first discovered something was wrong shortly after she gave birth to her second child in May 2024.
“My doctor noticed that my blood count looked strange,” she wrote. “A normal white-blood-cell count is around four to eleven thousand cells per microliter. Mine was a hundred and thirty-one thousand.”
Photos accompanying the article show Schlossberg with short, greying hair as she continues treatment.
She also revealed that doctors questioned whether her illness could be linked to the 9/11 attacks due to the high rate of blood cancers among first responders.
“Every doctor I saw asked me if I had spent a lot of time at Ground Zero,” she wrote. “I was in New York on 9/11, in the sixth grade, but I didn’t visit the site until years later.”
She added, “I am not elderly — I had just turned thirty-four,” highlighting the shock of receiving such a diagnosis at her age.
Schlossberg recounted the disbelief she felt when doctors delivered the news.
“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.”
Her essay was published on November 22 — the 62nd anniversary of JFK’s assassination in 1963, adding another layer of sorrow to the Kennedy family’s history.
Her brother, Jack Schlossberg, meanwhile, is launching a political career of his own and is currently running for Congress in New York’s 12th District, soon to be vacated by Rep. Jerrold Nadler.
Another chapter of heartbreak has opened for America’s most storied political family — and for Tatiana Schlossberg, the fight now is heartbreakingly short.
