Tatiana Schlossberg, JFK's granddaughter, reveals terminal cancer diagnosis

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FILE - Tatiana Schlossberg on August 27, 2019. (Photo by: Nathan Congleton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)

Tatiana Schlossberg, an environmental journalist and the granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy, shared that she has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. 

Tatiana Schlossberg illness

Big picture view:

The New Yorker published on Saturday an essay from Tatiana Schlossberg titled, "A Battle With My Blood." She was diagnosed with a rare type of leukemia a little over a year ago, and doctors have estimated she has about a year left to live. 

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) 

Schlossberg, 35, shared that she has acute myeloid leukemia, with a rare mutation called Inversion 3.

AML is a rare cancer that affects your bone marrow and blood, according to The Cleveland Clinic. 

The backstory:

Schlossberg wrote in her essay that her illness was first discovered after the birth of her daughter in 2024, when daughters noticed her white blood cell count was low. 

Since then, she’s spent months on and off in the hospital, has undergone chemotherapy, several blood transplants (including one from her sister), has undergone several clinical trials, and has gone into remission and relapsed several times.

What they're saying:

"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, remembering when she first heard of her low blood cell count was because of leukemia and not her pregnancy. 

"During the latest clinical trial, my doctor told me that he could keep me alive for a year, maybe," she also shared. 

Who is Tatiana Schlossberg? 

Big picture view:

Tatiana Schlossberg is President John F. Kennedy’s granddaughter and Caroline Kennedy’s daughter.

Schlossberg is Kennedy’s second child. She has an older sister, Rose, and a younger brother, Jack. They are President Kennedy’s only grandchildren. He was assassinated just before Caroline Kennedy’s sixth birthday in November 1963.

She’s worked as an environmental journalist and shared that she had plans to write a book about the oceans had she not gotten sick. 

Her essay was published on the 62nd anniversary of her grandfather's assassination.

Dig deeper:

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is her cousin, and she wrote of watching his political ascent during her treatment – ultimately leading to his confirmation as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, which left her feeling uneasy about the healthcare system that she had become so reliant on. Schlossberg also said policies backed by RFK could hurt cancer patients like her.

"Doctors and scientists at Columbia, including George (her husband), didn’t know if they would be able to continue their research, or even have jobs," she wrote. "I worried about funding for leukemia and bone-marrow research at Memorial Sloan Kettering. I worried about the trials that were my only shot at remission."

"As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to improve the lives of others, I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers," she said.