Tatiana Schlossberg (Caroline Kennedy's daughter) her terminal cancer at 34

[Anonymous]

She was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia while in the hospital after delivering her second child last year. She has about a year to live. She wrote an essay in the New Yorker, which I don't have a subscription. This is a link to archive.ph, which gets around paywalls.


https://archive.ph/Da2C5

[Anonymous]

Damn. And her brother is living online like an idiot.

[Anonymous]

I pray she gets a miracle and heals. I pray that Caroline Kennedy lives a good life and does not have any more heartbreaks.

[Anonymous]

This poor family. Especially Caroline.

[Anonymous]

Very sad

[Anonymous]

That is so sad.

[Anonymous]

That poor family.

She is courageous and clear eyed an excellent writer.

Good to see that she is still having an impact, despite her body,s diminished state. ❤️

[Anonymous]

Just heart-wrenching. And then we get to the end and the knife is twisted even more.

Meanwhile, during the CAR-T treatment, a method developed over many decades with millions of dollars of government funding, my cousin, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was in the process of being nominated and confirmed as the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Throughout my treatment, he had been on the national stage: previously a Democrat, he was running for President as an Independent, but mostly as an embarrassment to me and the rest of my immediate family.

In August, 2024, he suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump, who said that he was going to “let Bobby go wild” on health. My mother wrote a letter to the Senate, to try and stop his confirmation; my brother had been speaking out against his lies for months. I watched from my hospital bed as Bobby, in the face of logic and common sense, was confirmed for the position, despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or the government.

Suddenly, the health-care system on which I relied felt strained, shaky. Doctors and scientists at Columbia, including George, didn’t know if they would be able to continue their research, or even have jobs. (Columbia was one of the Trump Administration’s first targets in its crusade against alleged antisemitism on campuses; in May, the university laid off a hundred and eighty researchers after federal-funding cuts.) If George changed jobs, we didn’t know if we’d be able to get insurance, now that I had a preëxisting condition. Bobby is a known skeptic of vaccines, and I was especially concerned that I wouldn’t be able to get mine again, leaving me to spend the rest of my life immunocompromised, along with millions of cancer survivors, small children, and the elderly. Bobby has said, “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.” Bobby probably doesn’t remember the millions of people who were paralyzed or killed by polio before the vaccine was available. My dad, who grew up in New York City in the nineteen-forties and fifties, does remember. Recently, I asked him what it was like when he got the vaccine. He said that it felt like freedom.

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.

My plan, had I not gotten sick, was to write a book about the oceans—their destruction, but also the possibilities they offer. During treatment, I learned that one of my chemotherapy drugs, cytarabine, owes its existence to an ocean animal: a sponge that lives in the Caribbean Sea, Tectitethya crypta. This discovery was made by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, who first synthesized the drug in 1959, and who almost certainly relied on government funding, the very thing that Bobby has already cut.

[Anonymous]

https://people.com/caroline-kennedys-daughter-tatiana-schlossberg-reveals-terminal-cancer-diagnosis-11855177

"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," she added.

"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," said the mom of two."

[Anonymous]

So sad. I'm sorry for her and her family's loss. I'm sorry for all the wasted young lives. Reports keep saying people are living longer. I question that, because I know of so many people who have died young, and/or developed cancer at a young age. Sigh

[Anonymous]

I read the article. She is an amazing writer. AML is a heartless cancer. I feel for her and her family.

[Anonymous]

Oh that poor woman and her family. Leaving behind two children under the age of 3 is everyone’s worst nightmare.

God bless her for sharing her story during this difficult time and putting it in the context of the damages being done to our national health care system and medical research by her malignant cousin RFK Jr and the Trump admin.

[Anonymous]

Oh no, how awful for her and her family. So much tragedy in Caroline's life.

[Anonymous]

Sad, disturbing, and sobering.

Cherish every day.

[Anonymous]

One if the most tragic things I’ve read. Caroline Kennedy loses her father to an assassination, loses her only sibling, and now her child. How much grief can one person take?