Tatiana Schlossberg, Caroline Kennedy’s daughter, revealed in an emotional essay He published on Saturday that he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
The 35-year-old journalist and granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy candidly wrote an essay in The New Yorker about her battle with acute myeloid leukemia, which was discovered last year after giving birth to her second child.
Schlossberg said that after giving birth to her daughter, her doctor noticed an imbalance in her white blood cell count and she was eventually diagnosed with cancer, specifically “a rare mutation called Inversion 3.”
In this Nov. 16, 2019 file photo, Tatiana Schlossberg attends her book signing in Richmond, California.
Amber De Vos/Getty Images, FILE
“I couldn’t believe, I couldn’t, 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. In fact, I was one of the healthiest people I knew,” she said.
Schlossberg said doctors initially told him he would need months of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant.
“I couldn’t be cured with standard treatment,” he said.
Schlossberg said she spent five weeks at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City after giving birth to her daughter and was then transferred to Memorial Sloan Kettering for a bone marrow transplant.
In this Dec. 2, 2022, file photo, Britain’s Prince William, Prince of Wales, is greeted by U.S. Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy, Jack Schlossberg and Tatiana Schlossberg at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.
Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images, FILE
He then underwent chemotherapy at home. Schlossberg joined a clinical trial of CAR-T cell therapy, a type of immunotherapy against certain blood cancers, in January, but doctors said he would live only a year.
Schlossberg wrote about the support she received from her husband of eight years, George Moran.
“George did everything he could for me. He talked to all the doctors and insurance people I didn’t want to talk to; he slept on the hospital floor,” she said.
The couple has a 3-year-old son in addition to their 1-year-old daughter.
Schlossberg, who has two brothers, including Jack Schlossberg, who recently announced his candidacy for Congress, expressed gratitude for his family’s help over the past year.
“My parents and siblings have also been raising my children and sitting in my various hospital rooms almost every day for the last year and a half,” she said.
“They have held my hand firmly while I suffered, trying not to show their pain and sadness to protect me from it. This has been a great gift, even though I feel their pain every day,” added Tatiana Schlossberg.
In this Sept. 5, 2019, file photo, Tatiana Schlossberg attends Intelligencer Live: Our Warmer Future presented by New York Magazine and Brookfield Place in New York.
Craig Barritt/Getty Images for New York Magazine, FILE
She ended her essay by reflecting on her children and creating final memories with her daughter.
“Sometimes I fool myself into thinking that I’ll remember this forever, that I’ll remember it when I’m dead. Obviously, I won’t. But since I don’t know what death is like and there’s no one to tell me what comes next, I’ll keep pretending. I’ll keep trying to remember,” Schlossberg said.
