Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of the late former President John F. Kennedy and the daughter of Caroline Kennedy, has announced that she has terminal cancer. She is only 35 years-old.
Tatiana’s Terminal Cancer Diagnosis
Tatiana revealed that she has been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in an essay that was published in The New Yorker on Saturday, November 22. She was given this devastating diagnosis after giving birth to her second baby in May of 2024. At the time, Tatiana’s doctor noticed an imbalance in her white blood cell count.
“A few hours later, my doctor noticed that my blood count looked strange,” Tatiana wrote. “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.”
“It could just be something related to pregnancy and delivery, the doctor said, or it could be leukemia,” she continued. Tatiana added that she was diagnosed with “a rare mutation called Inversion 3.”
Tatiana’s Treatment Options
When it came to treatment options, Tatiana wrote, “I could not be cured by a standard course.”
At first, Tatiana was told that she would need months of chemotherapy and a bone-marrow transplant.
“I did not — could not — believe that they were talking about me,” Tatiana confessed. She wrote that she “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.”
“I had a son whom I loved more than anything and a newborn I needed to take care of,” Tatiana stated.
Tatiana married her husband George Moran back in 2017. They are parents to a 3-year-old son and a 1-year-old daughter.
After giving birth to her daughter, Tatiana spent five weeks at Columbia–Presbyterian Hospital. She was then transferred to Memorial Sloan Kettering for a bone-marrow transplant. From there, Tatiana underwent chemotherapy at home.
In January of this year, Tatiana joined a clinical trial of CAR-T-cell therapy. This is a type of immunotherapy against certain blood cancers. Sadly, she was subsequently told by her doctor that she had a year left to live.
Tatiana Praises Her Family
Praising her husband for his support, Tatiana wrote, “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.”
“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,” Tatiana continued. “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.”
Tatiana is the middle of Caroline and Edwin Schlossberg’s three children. Indeed, she has an older sister Rose, 37, and a younger brother Jack, 32.
“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 added. “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.”
When it comes to her own family, Tatiana concluded, “Mostly, I try to live and be with them now. But being in the present is harder than it sounds, so I let the memories come and go.”
Kennedy Family Tragedies
This is just the latest in a long line of family tragedies for Tatiana’s mother Caroline. She was only five years-old when her father was assassinated in 1963. Caroline’s mother Jackie Kennedy was only 64 when she died of cancer in 1994. Five years later, Caroline’s brother John F. Kennedy Jr. was killed in a plane crash, leaving her as the sole survivor of her immediate family.
This is clearly an extremely difficult time for Tatiana and for her entire family. Please join us in saying a prayer for them.