- August 03, 2017
My name is Jade Martin and I’m 17 years old. And I got started in gymnastics when I was three years old because my neighbor actually wanted to carpool with us. And so she told us like, oh, put Jade in gymnastics. And then I went and I ended up loving it and I just slowly progressed through the levels. It just came naturally that way. Well before level four I was not like great. I was just kind of doing it for fun. And then once I got to level four, I started actually winning competitions and it was kind of like a Whoa, like I can actually be pretty good at this. I went to level five and I won some competitions and same with level six and level seven. I went to regionals and did really well there I placed and stuff. And then it continued through level eight and that’s where I started having some issues with my hips.
I was at the store with my mom and we were walking around for like just five minutes after getting out of the car and I, my hips were like throbbing and so, so painful and I sat down in the middle of the aisle at the store and I was like, we have to do something about this. So it wasn’t really one accident where I fell or where I hurt myself once. It was an overuse injury. So I told my parents that I really needed to get my hips checked out because it was just too far at that point. They researched online for the best orthopedic places in the area and they’ve stumbled upon Florida Orthopaedic Institute and they really liked the reviews and everything checked out. So we went and scheduled an appointment. I was really terrified that I wouldn’t be able to train anymore and I kind of like over a period of time I accepted it. And I was kind of like, well okay, I’d rather be able to walk when I’m 30 then like keep training gymnastics and have all kinds of issues for the rest of my life.
At first, I was really nervous to go in because I didn’t think that they would find anything cause I know, I know that it wasn’t broken or anything like that. So I was really nervous that they would just say, Oh it’s just an overuse injury. Just take a while off gymnastics and whatever. And then we went into see Dr. Morse and he was so great because his daughter is actually a gymnast and so he knew all the lingo. He was like talking to you about all the events and different skills and conditioning. So he made me really comfortable with the entire process going into the surgery. The staff was super, super nice. They were calming me down cause I was very nervous and very frantic because it was my first surgery. And then after the surgery, I didn’t originally think that I was going to be going back into gymnastics.
I thought that the surgery would help me live a normal life, but I didn’t know if I’d be able to continue with gymnastics. And Dr. Morse kept pushing for me and he was like, no, I know you can do this. You can continue at gymnastics. Just see how it feels. Just try it out. So I started with a couple of training days a week, very, very slowly, started to get skills back and I did different conditioning and have now I’ve gotten to the point where I can do almost everything and more than I had before surgery. So I have nothing but great things to say about Dr. Morse and Florida Orthopaedic Institute. Without them, I would not be where I am today. I would still be hobbling around in the grocery store having to sit down every five minutes. And the fact that he pushed me and he knew that I could work through it and get to the point that I am today and qualified for nationals. And you know it just means the world to me that he had that faith in me and that the physical therapy helped me so much of strengthen the area and, you know, it was just overall a wonderful experience.
