someone was having a hard day. and they were t-shirts that said things like i had a blast in afghanistan. and marine, 40% off. the staff, we weren't much better. we were always concerned with whatever junk we've seen on late night tv, including ordering a snuggie for the clinic. but the overall feel in there was that this was normal. this was life. we were all going to move through it together. this was the longest war our country has ever been in. and as my coworker puts it, this is our generation's war, but it affects so few people. and on a personal level, i remember how completely astounded i was a day i got a patient had lost both of his legs after doing six deploymen

deployments. when walter reed begin to shut down in 2010, it coincided with the surge in afghanistan. and that your the caseload at walter reed tripled. unfortunately, walter reed was also in the process of moving to bethesda, and the first thing that happened was that they start to shut down the employee parking lots. so in order to find parking guide to get to work no later than 6 a.m., which we all did. we got to work at six. we worked through lunch and we stayed late. we were so busy that at night in my dreams, everyone was in amputee, even me. i know my friends over the years have gotten really sick of hearing me say that i was going to put walter reed. i was always going to quit. i was going to lead. this was it, i wasn't done, i was going to find a job with parking and better hours.

but then the next time you saw me i was still at walter reed, and they would get irritated but i never could quite explain it. the reason i ended up staying, i stayed for nine years, was because i was part of something that was much larger than myself. i couldn't just walk away because it was hard. and i was lucky because at night i was busy trying to find something funny to write about to send to the post and hopefully have them publish it. that really took my mind off what i was seeing at work. then one day my partner, actually, surprised me and said something to me that really blew me away. she said, you know, you're wasting your time writing those stories for the post. and i was shocked. she said that she thought my articles, they are cute and funny, but you're missing the real story. and she said i should be writing about walter reed. and i've got, you know, that's a

crazy idea. you know, that's completely insane. the whole reason i'm writing in the first place, to get my mind off of work. the last thing i'm ever going to do when i get home from work is right about work. then like a week later, almost as if they kind of planned it, the editor that i had worked with at the post called me, and he said he thought, with walter reed shutting that it would be really interesting if i were to write a few articles about my job. and i said pretty much the same thing too, but probably in a nicer way. said no way. i said i didn't feel comfortable doing that. so the next day my phone rang and it was reported from the post. and he said that he was going to be writing an article about the clinic i worked in, and boy, i tell you, i was so mad when i heard of that. i was seething on the phone.

he was asking me questions, and i was just getting angrier and danger. and i could tell that he just didn't get it. and how could he. he did work in the clinic. he seemed to be hunting for what i felt like was a really grotesque, shocking story about the most horrifyingly mutilated patient in there. he was just seeing the devastation, and in spite of all the devastation that would really ditzy at walter reed, it wasn't a depressing place at all. it was a happy place where we celebrated life. and, in fact, our colonel always refer to our clinic as a happy place. and she was right. it was a happy place. so i decided that i was going to write the article. and i wrote it and i wrote about, i wrote what i felt was like a pretty innocuous article. i wrote about taking some of our patients swimming for the first

time. and i didn't think this was a really fantastic article and i had deliberately kept it pretty mild. so i'm so surprised by the reaction that it got. people called me, people e-mailed me, and one day at work this elderly woman stopped me in the hospital and she asked if i was in one. and shoot -- if i was adele levine. she's probably in her 80s and she had to meet his able and then she walked away. when it opened the envelope there was a letter from her and she said that she was a retired army physical therapist. when she read my article in the post, she knew she had to come to the hospital and hand deliver it so that i would know how much it meant to her to read about it. when i read her letter, i realized at that moment that actually was right, that this was a story that people wanted to hear. and also that i was the right one to do it, that i would be

able to write about walter reed in a humane and humorous way with the insight that may be an outside writer would not have. so walter reed shut down, and i was part of the group that transferred to the new walter reed at bethesda naval hospital. and i wrote with the book. before it turned of the manuscript into my publisher, i kind of ran up the chain of command. i had some of my coworkers read it, and my supervisors, and then i had to give it to the department head. and this is a guy whose management style, he's not here, i would classify as being like highly unpredictable. [laughter] and slightly insane. and i was will be nervous about getting it to him. i thought, he's going to blow his top. so i thought, well, you know, i'll wait until friday and document him at the end of the day.

that way he will have the weekend to hopefully cool off. so friday gain and he shows up at work, and i gave it to him and i just took a step back because who knows how he's going to react. instead he got really seminal, and he said that we have this new hospital, this nice facility, and that most of the staff had stayed on. but he always felt like there was something missing. he couldn't put his finger on it, didn't know exactly what was. and then one day he realized what it was, and he said it was the spirit. he said, it was a ghost that you could actually feel when you're at the old walter reed. edit think my coworkers who are here can attest to that, that there was a feeling they are, and had to be. 150,000 people were treated at walter reed, and it was the oldest military hospital in america. it is exactly 2.8 miles from

here. frequently i thought that maybe coming on my lunch break, but i just never had a lunch break. if you do drive past it, it's right caddie corner from rock creek park. if you drive past it before they knock it down and turn it into a supermarket, and a new condominium, i hope you think about that spirit. i hope that you enjoy the book. the selection i'm going to read is the article that he wrote first the "washington post" about taking our patients winning for the first time. i revised it and expand it and entered into this book. i also want to say that i've been coming to politics and prose since 1994. i love this bookstore and actually wrote large parts of my book downstairs at that big table.

when you lose a leg or two it's hard to exercise. you gain a gun and sometimes level. special walter reed where we are surrounded eyed trades and traits of homemade chocolate chip cookies. thanks to the generosity of the administration and local athletes, our patients were constantly being introduced to unusual sporting events that they couldn't do, rock climbing. the centerpiece of the clinic was a larger-than-life climbing wall. it was two stories tall what are those in his speech about the deputy clinic, the cameras always and in on the climbing wall. it was the most photographed piece of equipment in the entire hospital. yet weeks, sometimes months would go by without a single patient ever climbing it. when new patients saw the climbing, their eyes lit up and they got excited. i knew what they were thinking. eight, losing two legs must not

be that bad if i'm going to go to climb this law. i'm going to get new legs and i'm going to climb this anti-everything is like i did before. i was guilty of facilitating this kind of deception. the climbing was the very first thing i showed new patients. i did it because it cheered them up and it was a way to get them to physical 30. but for all its usefulness and rehab it might well have been an ice skating rink. pigeon was completely limited by his prosthetic leg present potential so high up on us by it was hard to get a good socket fit. the socket frequently slipped off and sometimes a rotated on him when he walked. swimming was something i thought he could do since they mostly involve floating and you didn't have to worry about falling. the pool you don't need a fancy equipment. you don't need special water. you don't even need prosthetics. just goggles and some bravado. outside of work i begin training

again with a record shall swim camp a few nights a week. we practice at a pool close to walter reed. one guy called and asked the pool manager it would be okay if we brought some of the patients. ipod he would say no, or at the very least, charge us, but he said that would be fine and that it would be free. so the next week we borrowed a van from disabled sports u.s.a. and drove five guys to the pool. i know swim coach and have no idea how to teach anyone to swim. but i'm a physical therapist, which in the patient's eyes put it on the same level as genghis khan. so when i suggested it would get out of their wheelchairs and into the pool, no one argued with me. it was shallow, only four feet deep, so if you had a leg he didn't necessarily have to be able to swim. but for the others, the ones who have no links at all, my only strategy was for them to cling to the wall and venture across the pool in anywa any way they w fit. we learned some surprising

things. it is impossible for a person who is missing both legs to sink. you can do back flips off the side of the pool using just your arms to spring india. even if you're a aaa between missing both legs and an arm, you can post up easily and gracefully a half dozen times back and forth across the pool with your one good arm. i figure the pool program would gradually lose its appeal by the next week when we brought the van around, eight patients waited along with pigeon. and then 11. i consulted with the coach for my swim team and she volunteered her services. she didn't have a car that took two trains and bus commuters in the middle of the day. she was a strict and serious coach. pigeon would hang on the side of the pool, his entries submerged under the water listening to her feedback and for pushing off to swim another lap under her guidance. the soldiers learned modified terms and racing starts. they did drills and races and work up to 5102000 yards of

continuous swimming. having a coach get some legitimacy for a program. for two hours once a week, the soldiers stopping patients and were transformed into a swim team of sorts. we were still and motley crue at the pool. i was convinced our time was limited. in addition to the obvious battle injuries, most of the patients had big semi-offensive tattoos. they were loud and boisterous and let the prosthetic legs and arms lying around the pool deck here and in between sets and with splash and don't want another under the water and sugar great and appropriate pool chaos. but no one ever got mad at us. instead, a strange thing began to happen. people start to swim with us. they would get out of their lane and hop in ours. man, they would say, swing up to the nearest soldier, you are doing a good job. you keep on swimming. you can do this. one day we got to the recreation center and the very going down

to the pool was broken. i thought that some of the guys could bog down the stairs on their behind, but it was two flights. would have enough energy to lift themselves back up the stairs later? we were getting me to leave when the pool manager and two lifeguards came running up and begin caring some of our most injured guys dancers. i didn't get a chance to second-guess it. an hour later when i got out of the pool, they were standing at the stairs waiting for us. i have seen a lot of goodwill in my years at walter reed, but nothing on this level. physically reaching out and carrying another person, intimate world of heroes and superheroes, i put those lifeguards up there with firefighters and ambulance drivers. thanks for coming here. [applause] >> okay, we just have one mic today. it's over here.

>> and it comes a question. >> sounds like you all do great work. how do the therapist and the operations of walter reed approach spiritual and religious questions from the patients because we have a passion -- a chaplain and clinton handles most of those questions. i guess -- [inaudible] >> that's right. [inaudible] >> we are only interested in making you work. >> did you show the book to many of the actual soldiers that you've been treating? what did they think about it? >> i didn't, but i was surprised

that a lot of them ordered it and read it. they seemed to like it. i was surprised because i thought they wouldn't be interested. but i guess they are kind interested in what we do. when we are not giving them a hard time. but they have been very supportive. [inaudible] >> do i still keep in touch with an? yes, on facebook when everybody keeps in touch. i'm meeting one of them tomorrow actually with my friend and therapist at th -- spent there s the story of one guy who lost both legs in an accident on mount washington where he was

caught in an ice cave and caused the death of a rescuer and slow. he is tried to gone on and try to redeem himself by developing very advanced, at least for below the knee amputees that allow them to climb walls but and i wonder whether you ever ran into people who were able to use his prostheses to climb this infamous climbing wall? africa have gotten for what his name is. >> we did have an amputee come to us who was bilateral below the knee amputee, but we had so many entities come visit us. and we have access to all the latest and greatest prosthetics. but i to say that it was the work that you put into it. the thing about having, i know for climbers, the smaller your foot is the better you can fit it into little cracks. so what are the advantages i guess being in effigy is that you can get a really small foot.

but there's a big world of difference between being a below the knee and 50 and above me amputee. most below knee and the geese can pretty much get back to everything they were doing before their injury, with some modification. they might whack-a-mole funny going up a hill because their ankle doesn't bend that much but otherwise they can run, they can ride a bike, they can swim, not glenn. definitely becomes more difficult when you're missing both legs below the knee, i begin missing your legs below the knee versus missing your life above the knee is such a different world. but i do think, i remember him coming to bethesda. [inaudible] >> the question is, what was the purpose of the amputee tourism. i don't know but i just think that we are under the spotlight quite a bit at walter reed.

we used to have, we were in a smaller clinic before increased have a lot of visitors, like uso visitors and celebrities and media that would come in. they would come into our room and it was so crowded in there to begin with. so i don't think that thing started out to build it for us to be under the spotlight like that. i think they really wanted to do that to give us our space, but still allow visitors to come. but then it did sort of start to become amputee tourism. i like that term. [inaudible] >> obviously a lot of humor, but how would you describe your approach? >> the question is what is your advice for writers to my advice is to get a coffee maker with a timer on it. seriously. get up at 5:00 and write every day.

because, i mean, for me i just doubt it became easier, before i get into the habit. and also what else are you going to do that early in the morning? you're not going to post any status on facebook, hey, 5 a.m. [laughter] that's just my opinion, get up every day and, yeah, i would run for the coffee maker. >> you mentioned a moment ago the advances in prosthetics. you must have seen quite a few over the nine years that you were doing this. can you talk a little more about that and what more you think needs to be done to improve the? >> yeah, i think it's really interesting that most of the advances in prosthetics have been at the knee. they need is just a hinge joint. so it's the simplest prosthetics out there. if you don't have your knee, you're in a world of trouble as far as walking. but the armed prosthetics are

still fairly civil war era but even there you see on the news all the time they are always shown some mind-body connection or some hands that can respond to your thoughts or actions, but in reality they are not very functional. most people i know who have those don't use them because they are heavy. and again, nothing can really replace your hand. at walter reed we did, we start all of our new abode for me amputee's on a prosthetic knee that was called the clec which was the first computerized microprocessor -- it has had many advances. now there's the ex-to. now there's the x.3. if or if you're using a mechanical need to walk you'd have to really throw your leg out there to make sure that the knee was straight and locked up before you put your way through it or if it was is going to give white underneath you and you

would go down. the same thing would happen maybe yo if you took a step backwards or if you stepped on a rock or if you want constantly focus on where your foot was and where the knee was in your walking cyclysm sunday give white underneath you. the clec changed all that because when a patient puts about 70% of the bodyweight on to tell of their leg, the knee will release and it will step forward to it will lock up again. so it's a very safe in me, very stable and it takes a lot of that constant thinking about what your knee is doing out of the question. like you can see patients when they are new walkers, when they're walking and you talk to them they will stop in order to answer your questions or just continue the conversation. they are thinking so much. but as they become better able to walk and talk at the same time and which is something that we don't really ever think about. i think with the development of the microprocessor, it's really

help because they don't have to worry all the time that the knee is suddenly going to give white underneath them. remember, you can't feel the floor under your foot so it's a lot of strength and control that's going on. if you are a bilateral amputee, if you're doing that twice as much. so i think the advances have been really good with it. they are also working on power d prosthetics, but have to say that i find that those are really much more gimmicky and heavy and more of a moneymaker. i hope there are no prostitutes here countr -- prosthetic maker. [inaudible] >> everyone had a cbi. everyone, no, it was pretty mild but in the beginning things weren't, you know, patients were a little more irritable. they were irritable to begin with but maybe they were more

irritable, have more trouble with sequencing. >> i know he world is physical therapy and working with amputees, but walter reed also works with traumatic brain injuries. is there any crossover and approach you would take for both, for treating both types of? >> well, we worked as a big team at walter reed. so the tbi therapist were in the clinic, too. some of our patients would go through -- if they had a bad traumatic brain injury they would go through a rehab facility first. they would be sort of stabilized, healed of the first at walter reed and then they would go to specialized tbi center and then they would come back to do the amputee rehab. >> you mentioned that some of the amputee's, three of them i

think you said, had part of the pelvis missing. was a prosthetic developed to help them, and how did it work? >> they have a prosthetic that's kind of like a padded pocket that they would sit in. i mean, it depended on it was both parts of their pelvis or if they're missing both of the lakes at the hips. obviously, walking is going to be so much, it's going to consume so much energy for them that it's not practical for them to be walking around all day. but we did, a lot of them wanted to try, and so we would try it out. and also we would have special wheelchair cushions for them that were kind of molded to th them. >> eventually their wheelchair-bound, most of the time? >> yes. >> and what are you doing of? >> i work for myself now.

so if anyone wants to hire me -- [laughter] i'm available. >> not sure i quite know how to verbalize this, but i'm a military spouse, and living where we live there is this like disconnect where my husband was in the pentagon on 9/11 and we lost a lot of friends, and we've gone, the small part of the world that actually has been affected. and i'm wondering if you are ever in the spot that i think the fight ourselves in a lot, which is assuming things about the type of people who join in the fight or are in the military, there's a lot of assumptions about who they are and their political views versus

what you're finding at walter reed, if you ever were in like an odd position that way? >> oh, totally. >> my husband is at the pentagon and their like oh, he works at the pentagon, he must love books. and i'm like, no. so i was just wondering if that happens to you on not? >> definitely. i think that -- i don't know. i mean, i know my partner ashley's family is very liberal, and extremely liberal and that for a long time they viewed me as some conservative republican. and also i was asked, you know, do you treat iraqis or people from afghanistan to the? and i was like, well, no, because we are in america and this is an american military hospital.

i mean, sometimes i felt that, but i just always felt like politics just doesn't have the role in rehab, you know. we are all people, all good people, and i'm sometimes we would have some good-natured teasing i guess in the clinic between some of my patients who are definitely much more conservative than i was, and they knew it. and 9 i'm doing so we would alws make fun of each other during the elections. you know, i think it opened my eyes up to different kinds of people. i also thought it was very interesting because at walter reed we were, and you know, because this thing at the pentagon, you are surrounded by people from all walks of life, people from all over america and also all over the world. you would think by watching the news that you wouldn't get along, but actually you do. and i think having those

differences is really important. because instead of letting our politics get in the way, we all sort of pull together to tackle the problems. and i wondered if we were really homogeneous if that would've happened. that's a good question. is actually, i had to fill out this like reading group, something for the reading group and that was when the questions they asked. but i was much more political before i worked at walter reed, and now i just don't watch the news that much. i'm a big dummy i guess when it comes to that. >> i have a question. the spirit that your superior identified as being present at walter reed in the old hospital, when you got to the new hospital, did that change?

>> yeah, i feel like a changed quite a bit. a new hospital is such a different feel, even when you look at it. it's very sterile and modern looking. and the old hospital just had this comfortable feeling to it. it just felt homey. it had these hundred year old brick buildings with multi-painted glass but when he walked walked up the stairs of the old hospital, they were stone steps but they warn in those who they seemed like a sack. i always loved that. i thought the common people than walking up and down these stairs before me. unfortunately it won't be after me. there was a feeling there. there was also a lot of pride. it was a different feel. >> i'm wondering when you went to school was there anything in school that prepared you for the success you would be? it seems like what happened to

the soldiers hadn't been seen such a long time. i wonder if schools and academic programs don't prepare. >> the question is was i prepared for what is going to see? and the answer is no. i was in no way prepared. i had no idea what is going when i walked in. i was completely floored. i remember the first patient i saw who was combat injured and a completely blown away i was when i saw him. and i remember, it was a physical reaction to i remember feeling my heart speed up. i could imagine, i couldn't understand why i was feeling that way because i had seen bad injuries before. in school they would trot is through shock, and see you would think. but i think it was because it was the first of i've seen anyone who was maliciously and deliver we heard. so i wasn't prepared, but i guess i worked with a great team of people, and everybody pitched

in and everybody help each other out. there was a lot of education. there has never come nobody's ever seen injuries like this before. we send our soldiers and our brains, our ground troops off to battle this time tearing their own tickets, you know? the combat medics carried powdered and todd rising bandages so that they could stop the blood flow immediately. and so they were able to save so many lives that normally never would've been saved. so we saw injuries that people would very easily died from just 10 years prior. so the injuries, they got worse and worse because the medical care got better and better. and probably also the bombs got more extreme, but nothing could prepare you for that. but likely we worked as a team. >> i'm very interested, your comments about walter reed,

because i won't claim i've read everything about it but the articles i did read were extremely negative. they were about the scandal of the conditions in some of the warts and all. do you think that, in fact, it could have been, the facility should have been retained and itself rehabilitated? >> of course i think it should've been retained. as far as the scandal, they're talking about a building that wasn't on base. it was off base but it was across the street, outside the gates. i never saw it myself, so i can't attest to the conditions. but, you know, we were working, the original hospital which is 102 years old, was in use as an administrative place. but the new hospital was built

in 1977. that's where we worked. my house was built in 1943, and i hope that nobody is going and knock it down because it's so old, you know. my mother in switzerland at the buildings that will 1000 is only still in function. i just think, you know, now you have just a big bureaucracy. i think things work better when they're a little smaller. that's just my opinion. and again i'm not in administration, but i know that i was sad to see it closed, and i think i speak for most of my coworkers. we were all sad. >> well, particularly when you hear now about the shortage of facilities for the veterans and all. it might seem like not a totally good decision. >> the veterans hospitals are different because they are not active duty. we are an active duty medical facility.

[inaudible] >> did you ever have any qualms -- i'm sorry, about the resuscitation of people who were so gravely injured? >> i mean, i felt bad for some people, like what's their life going to be like when they leave. but now i guess we're all of business as usual. just get them up, get them walking. [inaudible] >> i had another question. most people don't have much experience with others who've lost limbs. and so they can be kind of awkward when you meet somebody like that. do you have any advice on what to say, how to act?

do you acknowledge the injury? >> i would ask them how big the shark was. [laughter] i don't know. we always dealt with it with humor but i think, you know, again, i worked in an army facility we just made fun of people left and right. and they made fun of you, too. but yeah, i think that people hate to be pitied. that's just my opinion. but i'm not napt. i would not not acknowledge it. i think the shark is always good. [laughter] >> we have time for one more question. >> you worked a pretty specific demographic which was -- [inaudible] you worked with there was specific demographic which is generally speaking probably younger, more active because they're serving in the military. did you find that to be a blessing or a curse generally from a rehab standpoint?

>> that's a good point. it was both. because they recover, they didn't want to, wpt. they would've had been up all night playing xbox. they were also extremely sick. so we could really work them. some patients will use that to their advantage. they would be in the clinic six hours a day working out. they were incredible. so it was a blessing, and now i work with older patients. i tell you, i think i went in there and just hammered some people. [laughter] it was kind of bad. [laughter] we are lucky because we're getting young people and they were in excellent shape so they could really do the work. they invented step that we never have seen before, like the makers of those elected coalition couldn't go up the stairs, one foot over the other

but our patience figured out how to do it by like taking the step and throwing their leg up there. you know, they said you can't run on the clec. i had a patient who ran on sea legs. they -- there were all sorts of myths, like when my professors in school told anyone notice a bilateral above the knee walking, especially if they're not holding onto something. we saw that all the time at walter reed. in fact, that was a goal. it wasn't just a goal to walk to get them back running. so the patients really pushed the envelope. we just sort of tried to keep up with them. thanks. [applause] >> thank you. tokay, leave the chairs in place please. if you line up to my left, adele will sit up here and sign copies of her book. thanks for coming. [inaudible