Tatiana Schlossberg, JFK's granddaughter, dies at 35 after battle with cancer

JFK's granddaughter dies at 35

Tatiana Schlossberg, granddaughter of JFK, has died. The family released the following statement: "Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts. George, Edwin and Josephine Moran Ed, Caroline, Jack, Rose and Rory."

Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, has died after a battle with cancer, the family announced on Instagram.

Schlossberg was 35 years old. 

What they're saying:

"Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts," the Instagram post read. 

Schlossberg had announced she was diagnosed with terminal cancer last month. 

Tatiana Schlossberg diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia

Schlossberg wrote an essay that was published in The New Yorker back in November revealing her cancer diagnosis. 

The essay, titled "A Battle With My Blood," detailed that she received her diagnosis a little over a year ago.

Doctors had told Schlossberg that she had about a year left to live. 

FILE - Tatiana Schlossberg attends her book signing at the In goop Health Summit San Francisco 2019 at Craneway Pavilion on Nov. 16, 2019, in Richmond, California. (Photo by Amber De Vos/Getty Images for goop)

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) 

Schlossberg 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.

"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:

Schlossberg is JFK'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.