Chicago Soft Tissue Lawyer Gives Free Advice On How To Get Bills Paid After Any Car Crash Or Other Injury.

Here is the Question:

Let’s say I just got into an accident with an injury.  Someone backed into me or somebody side swiped me or something like that.  I am hurting.

At what point do you think I should go see a doctor?

Should I go see a doctor every time you are in an accident? Should you wait for some symptoms?

At what point do you think it triggers me to go see a doctor? And at what point do you think that should manifest in itself into talking to an attorney?

That’s a great question. I get this a lot with people who get into a crash.

The first day they are not feeling that much pain and they try to tough it out. It would be hypocritical of me to criticize anybody who does that because I come from a long line of family members who never run to a doctor as a first resort. That’s pretty cool but take the law and the injury claim out of it.

Let’s just talk about your body and your health and your life.

You know we live in an era here where medicine is fantastic. And whether we are talking about injuries from a car crash or a fall down or whether we are talking about a disease like cancer or Parkinson’s, there is not a single medical problem that a person has out there these days that does not result in receiving a better prognosis with the earlier you get medical intervention. In other words, the earlier they catch cancer, the more likely they are to cure you.

The earlier you see a doctor when you start having pain, the shorter amount of time you are likely to have pain, and the earlier they will know what is going on and what the appropriate medical care is.

I am going to take off my lawyer hat for a minute and put on my human being hat, although I don’t know why it should be two separate hats.

I think people today owe it to themselves that if they are feeling pain after an injury, you only get one spin on the wheel here. At a minimum, get into a hospital and get checked out.

There are a lot of things that can go wrong with the human body that can seem minor, as every Chicago soft tissue lawyer knows. But in fact, symptoms of a serious permanent back injury are almost identical early on to a temporary back injury.

So the pain you are feeling, the symptoms you are feeling, the days following a car crash, you can’t yourself interpret what those symptoms of pain are. Only a doctor can do that.

Just because you’re not hurt as bad does not mean you should not see a doctor.

If God forbid you are hurt in a more serious way and you have to go in to litigation and file a lawsuit, insurance companies love it when people delay getting medical treatment because it results in a gap in treatment, it is what lawyers call a treatment gap.

In every case where there is a treatment gap, the insurance companies’ lawyer always argue about the treatment gap, if the plaintiffs’ lawyer and the trial judge let them get away with it.

Insurance companies will always argue:

Hey if this person got into a car crash, then why didn’t they go to the doctor right away. Isn’t that what they are supposed to do, go see a doctor? But Mr. Smith waited 10 days before he saw a doctor and then he waited another month after that to see a doctor again. We don’t know what happened in that gap.

So injury lawyers are very careful about it and even though it is the most natural thing in the world for people to do- to delay getting medical care- when you are sitting on a jury for some reason, jurors buy that argument.

They lend that argument credence and say “hey, if it was me I would have gone to the doctor right away. There is something fishy going on here.”

We really live in an age of skepticism of injury cases. I can understand if there is a bad case and it doesn’t deserve compensation. But what the insurance industry is doing in a lot of cases is taking natural human skepticism and attempting to paint all injury cases with that brush.

So I am really proving myself to be the typical lawyer by using a thousand words when ten could probably suffice.
But whether it is your health or whether it is for purposes of making a claim or a lawsuit, getting in to see a doctor right away is absolutely essential.

Also, to the last part of your question. You know lawyers offer free consultations.

I offer a free consultation by telephone or by person- whatever somebody wants to do- I am happy to answer questions.

The consultation is free with no obligation.

I talk to people all the time and we don’t proceed on the case. And I am happy to talk to people. I trust people’s instincts.

When a person feels like the insurance company they are dealing with is starting to get little shifty, people’s instincts about that are usually pretty good. It means that the insurance company is about to deny your claim, cut off your benefits.

It costs you nothing but a phone call and some time to talk to a lawyer like me, who can answer your questions and give you a read about the case and what you have to prove.  So it costs you nothing and it can benefit you.

I hope to hear from you.