Kennedy curse strikes again as JFK’s granddaughter, 35, reveals devastating terminal cancer diagnosis
John F Kennedy’s granddaughter has revealed her secret battle with terminal cancer.
Writing on the 62nd anniversary of JFK’s assassination, Tatiana Schlossberg, 35, said she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a type of blood cancer, in May 2024.
The daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg revealed she had no symptoms and felt she was ‘one of the healthiest people I knew.’
Doctors only found the disease through routine blood tests after she gave birth to her second child.
Writing a candid essay in The New Yorker titled ‘A Battle With My Blood‘, Schlossberg said the diagnosis came when a doctor noticed an 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.
‘It could just be something related to pregnancy and delivery, the doctor said, or it could be leukemia,’ she recalled.
Schlossberg was eventually diagnosed with a ‘rare mutation called Inversion 3’ which ‘could not be cured by a standard course.’
Tatiana Schlossberg, 35, the granddaughter of John F. Kennedy, revealed she has been diagnosed with terminal cancer
The 35-year-old, the sister of Kennedy political scion Jack Schlossberg (seen together), said she received the diagnosis after giving birth last year when a doctor noticed an imbalance in her white blood cell count
Schlossberg said she was bewildered by the news, and said despite being nine-months pregnant she was routinely exercising and ‘didn’t feel sick.’
‘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,’ she wrote.
Schlossberg said she spent five weeks at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital after giving birth, before she was transferred to Memorial Sloan Kettering for a bone-marrow transplant.
She then underwent grueling chemotherapy at home, and in January she joined a clinical trial of CAR-T-cell therapy, a type of immunotherapy against certain blood cancers.
In a devastating blow following the news, Schlossberg said she was eventually told by doctors that she had just a year left to live.
Schlossberg lamented the impact that her diagnosis had on her storied family, which has famously suffered a series of tragedies and scandals over the years.
The family’s tragedies include the assassination of her grandfather JFK in 1963, and then his younger brother RFK in 1968.
The next year, JFK’s younger brother Ted infamously drove his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, which killed passenger Mary Jo Kopechne – leading Kennedy to question at the time if ‘some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys.’
Schlossberg wrote in her essay shared Saturday: ‘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.
‘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.’
Schlossberg’s mother Caroline Kennedy served as the US Ambassador to Australia under President Joe Biden from 2022 to 2024, and previously served as Ambassador to Japan under Barack Obama.
Tatiana seen with her mother Caroline Kennedy, who served as the US Ambassador to Australia under President Joe Biden from 2022 to 2024, and previously served as Ambassador to Japan under Barack Obama
Schlossberg also praised her husband George Moran, a physician, for supporting her through her treatment
Schlossberg also praised her husband George Moran, a physician, for supporting her through her treatment.
‘George did everything for me that he possibly could. He talked to all the doctors and insurance people that I didn’t want to talk to; he slept on the floor of the hospital,’ she wrote.
She continued: ‘My parents and my brother and sister, too, have been raising my children and sitting in my various hospital rooms almost every day for the last year and a half.
‘They have held my hand unflinchingly while I have suffered, trying not to show their pain and sadness in order to protect me from it.
‘This has been a great gift, even though I feel their pain every day.’
The acute myeloid leukemia with Inversion 3 that Schlossberg was diagnosed with is a rare and aggressive form of cancer that is typically difficult to uncover
The acute myeloid leukemia with Inversion 3 that Schlossberg was diagnosed with is a rare and aggressive form of cancer that is typically difficult to uncover.
It is considered a very high-risk form of cancer with poor prognosis, and has a five-year survival rate of just 15-20 percent.
Because of its genetic makeup, the diagnosis is often resistant to standard chemotherapy.
