Tatiana Schlossberg, the daughter of former US ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy, and Edwin Schlossberg, wrote that she was diagnosed in May 2024 at 34 when, after the birth of her second child, her doctor noticed her white blood cell count was high.
It turned out to be acute myeloid leukemia with a rare mutation, mostly seen in older people.
Schlossberg, an environmental journalist, wrote she has undergone rounds of chemotherapy and two stem cell transplants, the first using cells from her sister and the next from an unrelated donor, and participated in clinical trials.
During the latest trial, she wrote that her doctor told her "he could keep me alive for a year, maybe".
Schlossberg noted that her cousin, Robert F Kennedy, Jr was on the national stage, first running for president and later becoming President Donald Trump's Health and Human Services secretary, as she has been treated and that his policies could hurt cancer patients like her.
"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 wrote in the essay, published on the 62nd anniversary of her grandfather's assassination.
Schlossberg wrote about her fears that her daughter and son won't remember her and feeling cheated and sad that she won't get to keep living "the wonderful life" she had with her husband, George Moran.
While her parents and siblings try to hide their pain from her, she said she feels it every day.
"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.
"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," she wrote.
