Photo by Kelli S. Hewett. Inset photo courtesy of Dr. Meg Gilmer.
Dr. Mary “Meg” Gilmer, an orthopedic surgeon who lives in Chelsea, is active in four sports and has gained a following on social media for her healthy living exploits. Inset: Dr. Gilmer holding event medals.
Dr. Mary Elizabeth “Meg” Gilmer spends her days repairing other people’s broken bones and her nights and weekends testing the limits of her own. So far, she has broken 22.
She charts her expertise and adventures on growing Instagram, TikTok and Facebook accounts.
“If my heart rate’s about 150, and I’m in the woods, that’s the same feeling for me as people get looking at the ocean,” said Gilmer, who lives in Chelsea.
The orthopedic surgeon, a foot and ankle specialist at OrthoAlabama Spine & Sports in Trussville and Hoover and at Grandview Medical Center, has treated the fractures and tendon tears that sideline runners and end seasons.
Photos courtesy of Dr. Meg Gilmer.
Dr. Gilmer charts her activities online, such as this night skiing adventure.
She also has logged miles around the globe in elite competitions on mountain trails, hammered her way through national ultimate Frisbee tournaments, and ground through top long-distance bike races and downhill ski days.
She likes to see what her body can do, but it’s also about seeing through her decisions.
“I will die before I will not accomplish something,” Gilmer said. “It’s not even really testing myself. Once the decision is made, it’s going to happen. It’s the actual effort of doing it. It’s very zen for me to be just walking, hiking, running or just zen being in that moment.”
Gilmer’s ties to her ortho practice trace back to age 6, playing King of the Slide with some older boys. The experience would guide the rest of her life, where she would become a surgeon, practice partner and president of the practice’s board of directors.
“I like to win, so I was holding on for dear life to the top of the slide, and they were trying to push me down,” Gilmer said. “I wasn’t letting go, so I ended up being ejected from the top of the old metal slide and broke my arm, and it was hilarious.”
She got up and held her bent, dangling arm, calmly following her screaming little sister to their mother. Pam Gilmer first thought the screaming sister was hurt — until she saw Meg.
“My mom’s like, ‘Oh, that’s crooked. That did not come that way,’” Gilmer said.
Dr. Perry Savage at the Trussville office set the fracture and would one day become her medical mentor.
Years later, Savage’s office manager recruited Gilmer as a high school work-study student, and she stayed through college and into medical school at UAB.
She became part of the practice as a surgeon and is now a partner. Pam works as Gilmer’s medical assistant.
Photos courtesy of Dr. Meg Gilmer.
A moment from a 50k run along the Colorado River.
Gilmer didn’t grow up in sports and was an unlikely social media sensation. She describes herself as “the most introverted human known to humanity.”
She loaded up on Scholars Bowl, Academic Bowl, Science Olympiad and French competitions instead of teams.
“My classmates from high school do not recognize me,” Gilmer said. “They think that I have undergone a transplant because I can now talk to anyone, which is what you have to do as a doctor. It was a deliberate choice along the way to learn how to be better at communicating.”
The idea of medical school didn’t arrive gradually.
It came in one sentence. At 12, she was deep into Egyptology, hieroglyphics and carefully plotted plans for graduate work. One day she sat on the living room floor reading a book on Egypt. “I looked up at my mom and said, ‘I’m going to be a doctor.’ And she was like, ‘Uh-huh.’ At that point, everything pivoted.”
And that’s pretty much how Gilmer has made life decisions ever since.
“If you think of me as a computer, my operating system is never turned off,” Gilmer said. “Once my brain has processed all the way through, it then presents me with the solution to the problem that you didn’t know you had yet.”
That’s how medicine arrived and later how orthopedics and foot-and-ankle specialization did too.
“It wasn’t this deep, like soul searching,” Gilmer said. “It’s just like, this is the right thing. Here you go.”
And yes, Gilmer realizes this sounds odd and is well aware, she said, that she both intimidates and drives people crazy with her life energy.
“In many ways she is like a grandmaster chess player, she sees many moves ahead and takes all possibilities into account,” Pam Gilmer said. “Patients benefit greatly from her vision and planning.”
Meanwhile, the ortho practice she’d grown up in was already planning and evolving — from Alabama Orthopedic Spine Center to Alabama Orthopedic Spine and Sports Medicine Association to its current, streamlined OrthoAlabama Spine & Sports.
Along the way, the athlete side of Gilmer’s story would only emerge late in college.
Photos courtesy of Dr. Meg Gilmer
Dr. Gilmer first fell in love with Ultimate Frisbee in her 20s and still competes.
OrthoAlabama orthopedist Brad Goodman needed women for his Ultimate Frisbee team.
“He says, ‘I will pay for your entrance fee, knowing that you’re broke, if you will show up,’” Gilmer said. “I immediately fell in love.”
The appeal wasn’t just competition. It was the chance to start from zero and explore a new identity in sports.
“What I found was I’m even more able to sort my brain out when I’m running around,” Gilmer said.
From Frisbee, the list of sports expanded.
Her father’s effort to get in shape pulled her into mountain biking. A move to Houston for residency steered her away from team sports that depended on assembling a full roster and toward disciplines she could train for on her own.
On her first wedding anniversary, she and her husband, whom she met on that Ultimate Frisbee team, decided to start mountain bike racing.
Gilmer’s own injuries became part of the story she now shares with patients as proof that she understands what it means to weigh risk, reward and the urge to keep moving.
Gilmer once developed a stress fracture in her femur playing Frisbee and kept going for weeks. She played a tournament, walked and hiked at a conference in Boulder, then stood through an entire surgical day before the bone finally gave way.
“I was like, ‘My hip just broke,’” she said to her team.
Despite the best medical advice, she kept a planned trip to France two weeks later. She logged 30,000 steps a day through Roman ruins and mountain towns.
“It cost me three months” in recovery, Gilmer said. “I am the single worst patient possibly on planet Earth.”
Her travels now look like multiday logistics plans.
“My vacations look like most people’s worst nightmare,” Gilmer said.
Long-distance hiking, trail running, mountain biking and skiing “very poorly” have become part of the public persona that plays out on social media.
Patients and strangers see their orthopedic surgeon walking the same tightrope they do between staying active and staying intact — she’s often wearing scrubs in the woods or on a trail, delivering a bite-sized nugget of ortho-related knowledge.
“I think the most important thing is reaching people where they are,” Gilmer said, “to help demystify the body and medicine.”
Knowing what can happen to the human body — and as someone who has paid in time and pain for her own choices — she spends a lot of time talking patients out of an all-or-nothing mindset.
The goal isn’t to get everyone running ultramarathons. It’s to keep them from walking away from movement altogether as they age or suffer injuries.
“Find something new that you love,” Gilmer said. “Exercise is not static. We have to change as our body needs us to change. It doesn’t mean stop.”
Follow Dr. Gilmer on Instagram and TikTok @adventureorthopodmd or on Facebook at Mary E. Gilmer, MD.
