Laughing Through the Pain

Guest Bio: Adele Levine, PT

Adele Levine is a practicing physical therapist. She received her Masters in Physical Therapy from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 2001 and her doctorate in Physical Therapy from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 2005. In 2009, she became a board credentialed Orthopedic Certified Specialist by the American Physical Therapy Association, and has been a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist by the National Strength and Conditioning Association since 2003.

Levine worked at Walter Reed Army Medical Center from 2005 until its closure in 2011. She was transferred to the National Naval Medical Center in 2011 (renamed Walter Reed National Military Medical Center), where she continued to rehabilitate war amputees for several more years. She also edited the department newsletter, The Turnip, known for such groundbreaking articles as restaurant reviews of the local eatery, Fish in the Hood, and suggestions that the new hospital uniform policy include choices of different superhero costumes.

Outside of Walter Reed, Adele is an accomplished humor writer with over thirty humor articles published in the Washington Post. She grew up swimming in the Rhine River with her Swiss grandfather and has completed the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim six times. Once on a trip to New York City she swam in the Hudson where a homeless man threw garbage at her. Before becoming a physical therapist, Adele was a purveyor of many dead-end jobs and had several bleak periods of unemployment that she spent rereading old novels and swimming in what she later discovered was one of the most polluted rivers in America.