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

by Adele Levine

M*A*S*H meets Scrubs in a sharply observant, darkly funny, and totally unique debut memoir from physical therapist Adele Levine.
 
In her six years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Adele Levine rehabilitated soldiers admitted in worse and worse shape. As body armor and advanced trauma care helped save the lives—if not the limbs—of American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, Walter Reed quickly became the world leader in amputee rehabilitation. But no matter the injury, physical therapy began the moment the soldiers emerged from surgery.
 
Days at Walter Reed were intense, chaotic, consuming, and heartbreaking, but they were also filled with camaraderie and humor. Working in a glassed-in fishbowl gymnasium, Levine, her colleagues, and their combat-injured patients were on display at every moment to tour groups, politicians, and celebrities. Some would shudder openly at the sight—but inside the glass and out of earshot, the PTs and the patients cracked jokes, played pranks, and compared stumps.
 
With dazzling storytelling, Run, Don’t Walk introduces a motley array of oddball characters including:  Jim, a retired lieutenant-colonel who stays up late at night baking cake after cake, and the militant dietitian who is always after him; a surgeon who only speaks in farm analogies; a therapy dog gone rogue; —and Levine’s toughest patient, the wild, defiant Cosmo, who comes in with one leg amputated and his other leg shattered.
 
Entertaining, engrossing, and ultimately inspiring, Run, Don’t Walk is a fascinating look into a hidden world.

• ISBN10: 1583335552
• ISBN13: 9781583335550
• Publish Date: 3 February 2015 (first published 10 April 2014)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Imprint: Avery
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 288
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781583335550

Reviews

[brokentune]

4.5*

It's not like I have run out of books to read, and yet, I keep picking this one up again and again re-reading parts.

Run, Don't Walk is the story of Adele Levine's (the author's) time as a physical therapist working with soldiers who had been wounded in combat, mostly Afghanistan, and needed to learn how to use their body again.

When I first picked up the book, I expected that this would be a hard read - and some of the stories are - but far from being a collection of stories of sadness and despair, there was a lot more to the book that I really enjoyed:

For one, I liked the detail in which Levine explained injuries, and more importantly, how they affected the persons day-to-day routine and how the physical therapists tried to come up with different ways to treat each person to maximise recovery.

I liked that it seemed an honest book about the successes and failures, and how it affected the patients but also the staff. Levine touches on, but doesn't dwell on, what hard work it must be for the medical staff to be exposed to so many injuries, not just physical but also mental, and how some of the medical staff were probably experiencing something like PTSD in their own right while trying to helps some of their patients convalesce.

What I liked most about it, though, is how Levine tells the stories - some with a sense of fun, some with a lot of empathy, but most of them with a lot of passion about the people around her.