Tatiana Schlossberg, granddaughter of slain President John F. Kennedy, is battling a uncommon type of leukemia and will have lower than a 12 months to reside.
In an essay revealed Saturday within the New Yorker, the 35-year-old environmental journalist wrote her sickness was found in Might 2024 after she gave beginning to her daughter. She was recognized with acute myeloid leukemia with a uncommon mutation often known as Inversion 3 and has undergone a number of therapies, together with chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants.
Schlossberg is a daughter of former U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, the previous president’s daughter, and Edwin Schlossberg. They reside in New York.
In her essay, Schlossberg acknowledged that her terminal sickness provides to a string of tragedies that has befallen the well-known political household. Her grandfather was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. Practically 5 years later, his brother, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, was fatally shot in Los Angeles after giving a victory speech on the Ambassador Lodge following his California presidential major win. Her uncle, John F. Kennedy Jr., died in 1999 when his small airplane crashed.
“For my entire life, I’ve tried to be good, to be a very good scholar and a very good sister and a very good daughter, and to guard my mom and by no means make her upset or indignant,” Schlossberg wrote.
“Now I’ve added a brand new tragedy to her life, to our household’s life, and there’s nothing I can do to cease it.”
She wrote her prognosis was gorgeous. She had simply turned 34, didn’t really feel sick and was bodily energetic, together with swimming a mile at some point earlier than she gave beginning to her second youngster at Columbia-Presbyterian hospital in New York.
After the supply, her physician grew to become alarmed by her excessive white blood cell rely.
At first, medical professionals figured the take a look at outcome may be tied to her being pregnant. Nevertheless, medical doctors quickly concluded she had myeloid leukemia, a situation largely noticed in older sufferers. She ended up spending weeks within the hospital.
“Each physician I noticed requested me if I had spent numerous time at Floor Zero, given how frequent blood cancers are amongst first responders,” Schlossberg wrote. “I used to be in New York on 9/11, within the sixth grade, however I didn’t go to the positioning till years later.”
She has endured numerous therapies. Her older sister, Rose, was one in every of her bone marrow donors.
Within the article, Schlossberg talked about the Kennedy household’s dilemma over controversial positions taken by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., her mom’s cousin. Schlossberg wrote that whereas she was within the hospital in mid-2024, Kennedy suspended his long-shot marketing campaign for president to throw his weight behind then-Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Trump went on to call Kennedy to his Cupboard as secretary of the Division of Well being and Human Companies, which oversees the Meals and Drug Administration, Nationwide Institutes of Well being and the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.
In one in every of his early strikes, Trump demanded a reduce in authorities cash to Columbia College, which employs her husband, George Moran.
“Docs and scientists at Columbia, together with George, didn’t know if they might have the ability to proceed their analysis, and even have jobs,” she wrote. “Instantly, the health-care system on which I relied felt strained, shaky.”
On Saturday, her brother Jack Schlossberg, who lately introduced his bid for Congress in a New York district, shared on Instagram a hyperlink to her New Yorker essay, “A Battle with My Blood.”
He added: “Life is brief — let it rip.”
