Run, Don't Walk: The Curious and Courageous Life Inside Walter Reed Army Medical Center

Good thing I'm pretty tough or I would have been in tears for the last several pages. Walter Reed became part of my DNA when I was a nursing student there from 1969 to 1971. I made probably a dozen "homecoming" visits over the course of the years, my last one being in May 2011. I just HAD to spend a week there taking my last photos and saying goodbye before the closure. I happened to be there the day they removed the bust of Walter Reed from its pedestal. I can't tell you how disappointed I was when years later I finally forced myself to go to Bethesda to "give it a chance" and had to ask about ten people how and where to find that bust. The Navy did a pretty good job of finding a great hiding place for it. Figures.There was something SO special about being even a minuscule piece of the jigsaw puzzle of history and accomplishment and service and legend that was Walter Reed - I will ALWAYS treasure the blessing of having been a part of that. I was able to tour the MATC in 2010 during a reunion of the Army Nurse Corps Association - so it was easy for me to visualize everything Adele described, just like watching a movie! Who knows, she was probably there working while I was on the other side of the infamous glass.I absolutely LOVED this book, read it in one sitting, and compliment the author on having captured the camaraderie, heartbreak, team spirit, and sense of pride that was part of the Walter Reed experience - AND for doing it with such a great sense of humor! We all know in this business that if we weren't laughing, we'd easily be crying . . . and I was howling with laughter as I read about the air horn on "Cosmo's" wheelchair, among many other vignettes. There is just something really really special about working with our military guys, (and girls, of course), especially the soldiers and marines.Thank you, Adele, for writing such a great tribute to the patients and place and people and spirit that are "THE" Walter Reed.

I worked in as a Physical Therapy aide and then later Assistant in the late 90s and loved my job so much. Loved the interaction with patients and had my share of hard cases when I worked at a transplant hospital in L.A. While I only had 2 amputee patients during that time, I understood quickly that working with amputations and prosthetics was a whole new ballgame no one in my department specialized in. Adele was able to write about what it takes to work with amputees in a language that was easy to understand, with or without a PT background.What I love about Run, Don't Walk is the heart and soul that Adele pours on to the page, along with her wit and wry sense of humor. It brought back the years I worked in the PT offices to see outpatients and then later, hospital patients as well. It also brought back the memory of veterans I worked with and the sacrifices they made, often one that never stopped when they left the battlefield.

Adele Levine's stories of her work at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as a physical therapist during the height of the casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan give us a poignant, at times sobering, but at more times touching and humorous account of her daily experiences there. The stories trace her years as a physical therapist, from how she joined the field to how she stayed with WR much longer than she anticipated, along with all of the characters she met and relationships she built. What struck me most about this book were two things: a very unique perspective on the aftermath of the wars in the middle east, and Adele's easy, welcoming prose. She manages to relate her own life events through the narrative, including her accomplishments as a long distance swimmer and avid cyclist, and some celebrations (meeting her partner) and losses (the death of her father). The way she weaves these in along with the stories of her patients bring a recognition of how the boundaries we often draw between work and life are much more fluid then we often to try to make it seem. Adele resonates as a humble narrator, inviting you into her crazy little world of prosthetic limbs, quirky therapists who bake pound cakes, volunteers who bring puppies to the hospital, and patients dealt heavy losses but determined to surmount them. I kept turning the pages because I wanted to read about what antics Adele would encounter in Walter Reed's "fishbowl.". Here's to hoping Adele continues to find the time to keep us laughing while she keeps on healing.

Highly recommend this superb book - sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes humorous, but always well written, personal, inspirational and profoundly affecting and humane. As a psychiatrist who worked at Walter Reed Army Medical Center from 1996 to its closure in 2011, I find Levine’s sympathetic portrayal of life there spot on. Her window into the rehabilitative care of recently wounded war-related amputees is incredibly moving, painfully lucid, and yet never gratuitous.Anyone with a heart will enjoy this broadly appealing book. If you are a physical therapist, however, it’s required reading. It is an important read for anyone who cares for those with traumatic injuries, historians of war and medicine, nurses, physiatrists, surgeons, mental health professionals, and VA and Military Health System clinicians from every discipline.

I am a high school student who is interested in becoming a Physical Therapist for war veterans and amputees, so I found this book at the perfect time. This is a memoir, so I was expecting personal stories and not a step by step guide to becoming a PT. I was touched by the selflessness and humanity in some of the characters, and I laughed very hard when the main character went into Home Depot looking for a rug. It was an easy read, that I finished in a few days. This book kept my dreams of becoming a physical therapist alive, and I am considering contacting the author with a few questions about her profession. I would recommend this book for anyone who enjoys helping veterans or people in general and for anyone with an interested in physical therapy.

I think there’s nothing funny about someone telling you how funny something was. I’m sure there has been much hilarity during the years and that both staff and patients are heroes. I wanted to know so much more about the patients and the emotional wringer the staff go through. There was far too much information about the army procedures, I got bored which is a shame when the work the writer does is amazing and she is so generous in spirit and commending those around her