Tatiana Schlossberg, Caroline Kennedy's daughter, reveals terminal cancer diagnosis
Tatiana Schlossberg, the daughter of Caroline Kennedy, revealed in an emotional essay published Saturday that she has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
The 35-year-old journalist and granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy wrote candidly in The New Yorker essay about her battle with acute myeloid leukemia, which was discovered last year after she gave 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."
"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 said.
Schlossberg said doctors initially told her she would need months of chemotherapy and a bone-marrow transplant.
"I could not be cured by a standard course," she said.
Schlossberg said she spent five weeks at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City after giving birth to her daughter and then transferred to Memorial Sloan Kettering for a bone-marrow transplant.
She 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 she would live for just a year.
Schlossberg wrote about the support she received from her husband of eight years, George Moran.
"George did everything for me that he possibly could. He talked to all the doctors and insurance people that I didn’t want to talk to; he slept on the floor of the hospital," she said.
The couple has a 3-year-old son in addition to their 1-year-old daughter.
Schlossberg, who has two siblings -- including Jack Schlossberg, who recently announced a run for Congress -- expressed gratitude for her family's help over the last year.
"My parents and my brother and sister, too, have 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 unflinchingly while I have suffered, trying not to show their pain and sadness in order to protect me from it. This has been a great gift, even though I feel their pain every day," Tatiana Schlossberg added.
She ended her essay reflecting on her children and creating last memories with her daughter.
"Sometimes I trick myself into thinking I’ll remember this forever, I’ll remember this 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 after it, I’ll keep pretending. I will keep trying to remember," Schlossberg said.
