JFK’s granddaughter, 35, shares horror terminal analysis with devastating phrases
President John F. Kennedy’s granddaughter Tatiana Schlossberg, the daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg, says she has acute myeloid leukemia.
John F Kennedy’s grandaughter Tatiana Schlossberg has revealed she has less than a year to live after being diagnosed with terminal blood cancer. The 35-year-old environmental journalist says was diagnosed with myeloid leukaemia, a type of blood cancer, hours after giving birth to her daughter last year.
Writing about her treatment in the New Yorker magazine on the 62nd anniversary of JFK’s assassination, Tatiana says she was diagnosed in May 2024 after her doctor noticed her “strange” white blood cell count in the hospital.
Tatiana, the daughter of former US ambassador Caroline Kennedy, 67, and Edwin Schlossberg, 80, says her doctor has told her that he can keep her “alive for a year, maybe” during the latest clinical trial. She wrote: “My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids, wouldn’t remember me. My son might have a few memories, but he’ll probably start confusing them with pictures he sees or stories he hears.
“I didn’t ever really get to take care of my daughter—I couldn’t change her diaper or give her a bath or feed her, all because of the risk of infection after my transplants. I was gone for almost half of her first year of life. I don’t know who, really, she thinks I am, and whether she will feel or remember, when I am gone, that I am her mother.”
READ MORE: US insists it ‘authored’ Ukraine peace plan as doc dubbed Russia’s ‘wish list’
Describing herself as “one of the healthiest people I knew,” Tatiana says she had no symptoms that something was wrong. But after doctors noticed an imbalance in her white blood cell count, she was sent for tests. Eventually she was diagnosed with a rare mutation called Inversion 3, which doctors warned cannot be cured by standard treatments.
Describing her shock, she wrote: “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.”
Since her diagnosis, Tatiana said she has undergone two bone-marrow transplants, chemotherapy and blood transfusions. At the start of 2025, she joined a clinical trial of CAR-T-cell therapy, a type of immunotherapy that has successfully worked against certain blood cancers. But in a devastating blow, she has since been told she has less than a year to live.
Lamenting the horrendous impact her diagnosis has had upon her family, Tatiana said she felt guilty for bringing “a new tragedy” to her mother’s life. She wrote: “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.”
The so-called Kennedy Curse has circulated for decades, being blamed for deaths, misfortunes and tragedies that have struck down America’s most famous family members in their prime. The sprawling dynasty appears to have endured more than its fair share of misfortune, prompting many to wonder whether the family has been cursed.
On November 22 1963, Caroline’s father was shot dead whilst travelling in a motorcade through Dallas city centre. John F Kennedy – better known by his initials as JFK – was on a political visit to Texas with his wife Jackie Kennedy when he was shot through the throat by a gunman concealed nearby.
He was rushed to hospital but declared dead 30 minutes later. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and charged with the assassination of JFK, having shot dead a police officer and attempting to hide in a nearby cinema when he was caught.He denied having anything to do with the political murder, stating that he was a “patsy”, and was shot dead himself two days later by local club owner Jack Ruby on live television whilst in police custody.
JFK’s wife Jackie was forced to watch his successor’s inauguration whilst still wearing her iconic pink suit stained with her late husband’s blood. Before the historic moment, which was captured in photographs aboard Air Force One, she cleaned some of the blood from her face but immediately wished she hadn’t. “One second later, I thought, ‘Why did I wash the blood off?’ I should have left it there; let them see what they’ve done,'” she later disclosed.
Tatiana also criticised her second cousin, RFK Jr, who is Secretary of Health and Human Services, for slashing cancer funding and promoting vaccine scepticism. Describing him as an “embarrassment to me and the rest of my immediate family,” she said his appointment made “the health-care system on which I relied felt strained, shaky.”
She added: “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; slashed billions in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest sponsor of medical research; and threatened to oust the panel of medical experts charged with recommending preventive cancer screenings.
“Hundreds of N.I.H. grants and clinical trials were cancelled, affecting thousands of patients. 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. Early in my illness, when I had the postpartum hemorrhage, I was given a dose of misoprostol to help stop the bleeding.
“This drug is part of medication abortion, which, at Bobby’s urging, is currently “under review” by the Food and Drug Administration. I freeze when I think about what would have happened if it had not been immediately available to me and to millions of other women who need it to save their lives or to get the care they deserve.”
Kennedy Curse
Just five years following her father’s murder, Caroline’s uncle Robert Kennedy was also struck down by a killer’s bullet, fuelling speculation about the Kennedy Curse. The 42 year old statesman was shot dead in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
Earlier that evening, he had been declared victorious in two presidential primaries and appeared destined for a equally distinguished political career as his renowned brother. Robert was moving through the kitchen corridor when the assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, opened fire directly at him.
Robert collapsed to the floor, fatally injured, whilst greeting 17 year old busboy Juan Romero, who was captured beside his fallen body in stunned disbelief by a press photographer covering the senator’s campaign. Following his conviction for Kennedy’s murder, Sirhan Sirhan received the death penalty but his sentence was reduced to life imprisonment in 1972.
He has remained incarcerated in a California jail ever since. Caroline’s mother Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, died at age 64 in 1994 from non-Hodgkin lymphoma cancer. She was buried besides JFK, despite having married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, with the pair said to have been living separate lives.
Her younger brother, John F Kennedy Jr, along with his wife, Carolyn Bessette, and sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette, were killed in a plane crash on July 16, 1999. The trio were on their way to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, when the plane JFK Jr was flying went into the Atlantic Ocean.
In 2012, Mary Kennedy – the ex-wife of Robert F Kennedy Jr, son of the slain Robert and nephew of JFK – fell victim to the Kennedy Curse in 2012 when she was discovered dead at her residence by her devastated housekeeper. The 52 year old architect and mother of two had been living a solitary life since her marriage ended two years ago, and was tragically found hanged in a barn.
In a heartfelt statement, the family said Mary “inspired us with her kindness, her love, her gentle soul and generous spirit”.
“Mary was a genius at friendship, a tremendously gifted architect and a pioneer and relentless advocate of green design who enhanced her cutting-edge, energy efficient creations with exquisite taste and style. Our heart goes out to her children who she loved without reservation,” they added.
It has come to light that Mary had struggled with drugs and alcohol since becoming a Kennedy in 1994. She was arrested in 2010 on a drink-driving charge, and made headlines in 2007 when she was taken by her husband to hospital for treatment, but resisted and ran screaming from the car in front of shocked bystanders.
Rosemary was the third of the Kennedy siblings born to Joseph and Rose, and sister to JFK, Robert and Ted Kennedy. However, medical errors at her birth led to developmental delays, and – having been prone to mood swings and violent outbursts as a teenager – her father arranged for her to have a prefrontal lobotomy when she was 23.
The experimental surgery went disastrously wrong, reducing the bright young woman’s mentality to that of a child. Her life was shrouded in secrecy and she was kept away from her loved ones, confined to an institution in Wisconsin. Rosemary spent the rest of her life incapacitated, passing away in a care home in 2005 at the age of 86.
