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Tatiana Schlossberg, granddaughter of John F. Kennedy and daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg, revealed she has a rare, terminal illness. She is 35. Tatiana received her diagnosis last year when she was 34 and had just given birth to her second child.
“When I was diagnosed with leukemia, my first thought was that this couldn’t be happening to me, to my family,” Tatiana penned in an essay published by The New Yorker on November 22, 2025.
Keep reading to learn about Tatiana’s illness and how she’s managing it.
What Illness Does Tatiana Schlossberg Have?
Tatiana has Acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a form of cancer, with a rare mutation called Inversion 3. She detailed her journey through her November 2025 essay while slamming her cousin Robert F Kennedy Jr. for “cut[ting] nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers.”
“When you are dying, at least in my limited experience, you start remembering everything.” Tatiana Schlossberg, the daughter of Caroline Kennedy, writes about receiving a terminal diagnosis. https://t.co/cqpafPbNOj
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) November 22, 2025
What Is Acute Myeloid Leukemia?
Acute myeloid leukemia is a cancer that begins in the bone marrow, then moves into the blood, per the American Cancer Society. Symptoms include weight loss, fever and loss of appetite.
Is There a Cure for Acute Myeloid Leukemia?
There is no simple cure for AML, but with multiple treatments and possibly surgery, the form of cancer can be cured, Tatiana pointed out in her essay.
“I could not be cured by a standard course of treatment. I would need a few months, at least, of chemotherapy, which would aim to reduce the number of blast cells in my bone marrow,” Tatiana wrote. “Then, I would need a bone-marrow transplant, which could cure me. After the transplant, I would probably need more chemotherapy, on a regular basis, to try and prevent the cancer from returning. I did not — could not — believe that they were talking about me.”
Pointing out that she never felt sick before her diagnosis, Tatiana insisted in the essay that she “was actually one of the healthiest people [she] knew.”
“I regularly ran five to ten miles in Central Park,” she continued, adding, “I once swam three miles across the Hudson River — eerily, to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I work as an environmental journalist, and for one article, I skied the Birkebeiner, a fifty-kilometre cross-county race in Wisconsin, which took me seven and a half hours. I loved to have people over for dinner and to make cakes for my friends’ birthdays. I went to museums and plays and got to jump in a cranberry bog for my job.’
Is Tatiana Schlossberg Dying?
Yes, Tatiana is unfortunately dying. She noted that a doctor told her she has “maybe” one year left to live.
“When you are dying, at least in my limited experience, you start remembering everything,” she acknowledged. “Images come in flashes — people and places and stray conversations — and refuse to stop. … Maybe my brain is replaying my life now because I have a terminal diagnosis, and all these memories will be lost.”
Elsewhere in her essay, Tatiana pointed out, “My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids, wouldn’t remember me. Now, I have added a new tragedy to [my mother’s] life, to our family’s life, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
