Courtesy Photo | Tatiana Rosario is surrounded by her family as she begins her cancer treatment at...... read more read more
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From July 2024 to June 2026, U.S. Navy Capt. Juan Rosario proudly served as the chief of staff at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. This role holds a deep, personal meaning for him, as it allowed him to give back to an institution that gave so much to his own family in a critical time.
In 2018, as a commander, Rosario was stationed with his family in Naples, Italy, where he was serving as the director for branch clinics at the U.S. Naval Hospital. At that time, he had no idea the impact Walter Reed and its staff would later have on him or his family.
On a peaceful Sunday morning, Rosario’s 9-year-old daughter, Tatiana, suddenly developed a fever and an irritating cough. Assuming they were dealing with the flu, they took her to the doctor on Monday. She was prescribed medication to reduce the fever and fight the flu, and the Rosarios took her home. By Wednesday, the fever had not gone down, and Tatiana became severely dehydrated.
“We took her to the emergency room,” Rosario said. “Our upstairs neighbor, the mother of Tatiana’s best friend, happened to be the outgoing ER doctor finishing her shift. She decided to stick around and ordered some X-rays and a CT scan. To our surprise and fear, they found a 10-centimeter mass on Tatiana’s eighth rib on her right side. It had started pushing in, and that was causing the fever and cough.”
As it happened, the discovery of the football-shaped mass proved to be a “happy” accident. An energetic child, Tatiana enjoyed gymnastics, dancing and cheerleading, but none of her usual activities had caused any issues for her as the mass slowly grew on her rib. When she happened to bump her side while playing with friends, the membrane surrounding the tumor tore and began leaking fluid into her system, which caused the symptoms to begin. Had the accident not occurred, the mass would have most likely continued to grow undetected.
A flurry of activity followed. The medical team in Naples immediately began coordinating with staff from Walter Reed. By that Saturday, the Rosarios were back in the United States, and Tatiana was checked into the hospital. Things had moved so fast that they were forced to leave their two young sons behind in Italy with their oldest son, who had just completed college.
Under the care of U.S. Army Lt. Col. (Dr.) Lauren Vasta and Dr. Kip Hartman of Walter Reed’s pediatric hematology-oncology clinic, and with the support of Stacee Springer, the pediatric hematology-oncology clinic's social worker, Tatiana began receiving treatment. Following a biopsy, the mass on Tatiana’s rib was identified as Ewing sarcoma, a rare type of bone cancer that occurs in children and young adults.
“The team told me they didn’t need me to be Commander Rosario; they needed me to be Dad,” Rosario said. “They took care of everything behind the scenes: lodging, accommodations, tutors, so that my wife and I could focus on what was important – our daughter.”
In February 2018, Tatiana began a rigorous series of chemotherapy treatments. While the side effects, such as hair loss and pronounced nausea, came on aggressively, the Rosarios and Tatiana’s doctors took it as a good sign that she responded so quickly to the treatment. To the medical team, her body's strong reaction indicated that the chemotherapy was actively working to attack the cancer cells and shrink the tumor.
Meanwhile, members of the Rosarios’ family came from New Jersey and Connecticut to offer their support. Tatiana drew strength from them, as well as friends she began making among the other patients and the nursing team in charge of her care.
Rosario returned to Italy in April 2018 to bring their two sons and their belongings back to the states. By that point, he had accepted a position at the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) in Falls Church, Virginia, and they had relocated their home to Fairfax.
While Tatiana underwent her treatment, she began attending school in Fairfax. The loss of her hair and the other effects she experienced caused her a degree of anxiety. Springer, on her own time, coordinated with the school’s administration to hold an assembly for Tatiana’s classmates to educate them about cancer and explain its impact on young patients.
Following Tatiana’s third round of chemotherapy, subsequent X-rays showed the tumor had shrunk significantly.
“The team said that it looked like we had the tumor on the ropes,” Rosario said. “They wanted us to consider removing it, and we elected to have the surgery performed at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.”
On May 8, 2018, on their day off, several of the Walter Reed nurses responsible for Tatiana’s care drove to Baltimore to be there for her operation. They took turns sitting with her in the pediatric intensive care unit and with the family in the waiting room. When Rosario told them it wasn’t necessary for them to be there, they all insisted they wanted to be.
Tatiana remained in recovery at Johns Hopkins for three weeks before returning to Walter Reed to continue supplemental chemotherapy treatments to ensure any remaining cancer cells were eliminated. Finally, in November 2018, less than a year after the saga began, Tatiana rang the bell in Walter Reed’s pediatric hematology-oncology clinic to indicate she was cancer-free.
“She went into monitoring where every three months they would do a positron emission topography (PET) scan,” Rosario said. “It went from three months to six months, and then it moved to once a year. We firmly believe our faith and our strong family connection were integral to Tatiana’s recovery”
In 2021, Rosario took a new assignment in Jacksonville, Florida. There was more to making the decision to leave, however, than just the new job.
“The reason we left Walter Reed was to encourage our daughter that we truly believed she was healed,” Rosario said. “It could have been easy to stay, but we chose to go to Florida to show her she can have a normal life.”
And then, in March 2024, Rosario was given the option to return to Walter Reed as its chief of staff. The family didn’t hesitate.
“My heart jumped,” Rosario said. “From day one, my drive, my motivation has been to say thank you. Thank you to the staff, thank you to the team. I would do whatever I needed to [do] to help the team be successful in what they do, as a way of saying thank you for saving my daughter’s life. Eight years later, she’s 18. She’s just graduated from high school and will be starting nursing school in the fall, as her own way of saying thank you to the Walter Reed team.”
| Date Taken: | 06.25.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 06.25.2026 14:41 |
| Story ID: | 568564 |
| Location: | MARYLAND, US |
| Web Views: | 17 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, It’s Not Just Care at Walter Reed, It’s Family – The Rosarios, by Christopher Smith, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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