Run, Don't Walk

Run, Don't Walk: The Curious and Chaotic Life of a Physical Therapist Inside Walter Reed Army Medical Center - Adele Levine

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 help 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.