Tatiana Schlossberg reveals terminal cancer diagnosis, another Kennedy family tragedy

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Tatiana Schlossberg, whose grandfather was President John F. Kennedy, is fighting a rare and serious type of leukemia. Doctors have indicated she may have less than a year to live.

Environmental journalist Emily Oster, 35, revealed in a New Yorker essay published Saturday that she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in May 2024, shortly after giving birth to her daughter. She has a rare form of the leukemia called Inversion 3 and has been receiving treatment, including chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants.

Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of a former U.S. President, and her husband, Edwin Schlossberg, live in New York. Their daughter is Schlossberg.

In a recent essay, Schlossberg shared that her own serious illness comes after a long history of tragedy for her family. Her grandfather, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963. Less than five years later, her uncle, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was also fatally shot after winning the California presidential primary. Later, in 1999, her uncle John F. Kennedy Jr. died in a plane crash.

Schlossberg shared that she’s always strived to be a good person – a dedicated student, a caring sister, and a dutiful daughter – and that she especially wanted to shield her mother from any distress or anger.

I’ve brought another hardship into her life, and into our family’s, and I feel helpless to change it.

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The diagnosis came as a complete shock. She was only 34, felt perfectly healthy, and was very active – she’d even swum a mile just a day before giving birth to her second child at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York.

After the delivery, her doctor became alarmed by her high white blood cell count.

Doctors initially thought her test results might be related to her pregnancy, but they soon discovered she had myeloid leukemia, a type of cancer more common in older people. She required several weeks of hospital care.

Schlossberg explained that doctors frequently asked if she’d been exposed to the Ground Zero site after 9/11, because first responders often develop blood cancers. While she was in New York City on 9/11 – she was in sixth grade at the time – she didn’t actually go to Ground Zero until much later.

She has endured various treatments. Her older sister, Rose, was one of her bone marrow donors.

In a recent article, Schlossberg discussed the difficult situation the Kennedy family faced due to controversial statements made by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is her mother’s cousin. She explained that while she was hospitalized in mid-2024, Kennedy briefly paused his unlikely presidential campaign to publicly support then-President Trump, the Republican candidate.

Trump appointed Kennedy as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, putting him in charge of important agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Early in his presidency, Trump sought to reduce federal funding for Columbia University, where her husband, George Moran, works.

She explained that researchers and doctors at Columbia, including someone named George, were worried about losing their jobs and being able to continue their work. She also felt that the healthcare system she depended on was suddenly unstable and under pressure.

Politics

Despite a controversial history, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was offered a position in President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet, signaling a surprising new alliance.

This past Saturday, her brother, Jack Schlossberg—who recently announced he’s running for Congress in New York—shared a link to her New Yorker article, “A Battle with My Blood,” on Instagram.

He added: “Life is short — let it rip.”

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2025-11-23 03:01