After An Accident – Hancock Injury Attorneys

Transcript

Hi, I’m Mike Hancock of the Hancock law firm. Periodically, you’ll be hearing from me and some of my friends in the Carrollwood community who are specialists in their respective fields and we’re going to be sharing some videos from my law firm and from some of my friends who are in the Carrollwood community about legal issues and other issues that might be interesting to you.

Hi, I’m Dr. Tommy Lane with Lane family chiropractic in Carrollwood, Florida. I basically want to give you a few tips about what to do after a car accident: one;  you’re in the accident; you’re in the moment; you don’t know what’s happening; you kind of tighten up; you stiffen up. The accident happens. Shortly after the accident, you’re kind of stunned and confused, you notice that nothing’s broken, you’re not bleeding, so you kind of dismiss that you may be hurt or may not be hurt. Of course, you attend to your car, attend to the situation, definitely file a police report, get a police report, in any situation that you can because that’s gonna say who’s at fault and who’s not at fault.

Secondly, what I would do is, would get checked out by a medical professional, whether it’s a chiropractor, whether it’s an emergency room. Whoever it may be, definitely get checked out.

Too many times I see patients come into the office and what they come in for is chronic conditions and I always ask them in their history, I ask them: “How did you get this chronic condition?” and one of the things I relate back to is a motor vehicle accident. And they say: “Well, you know as a minor fender-bender. I was just tapped from behind.”

You may not associate those symptoms from the motor vehicle accident with what’s going on. It may be a day, two days, three days, weeks later, even months later. Usually, those symptoms can be lingering and they can cause a lot of soft tissue injuries.

For instance, if you had a car accident, you weren’t broken or bleeding, you felt fine, you went home, you took it easy. The next day or two, you may have headaches, you may have blurred vision, you may have neck pain, you may have low back pain. It may be a couple of days afterward and you won’t associate that, you may think it’s your normal neck pain, but what that car accident is done is it has whiplashed or strained or sprained some of those ligaments, tendons, or muscles to cause those injuries.

So, with that being said, headaches, neck pain, lower back pain, and blurred visions can be associated with that car accident because, if you look at it, the body has been shifted and misaligned. The car is designed to take the impact; your body is not. The car is bolted down; you’re not.

All those things can come into play when you’re involved in these car accidents. What we do at Lane family chiropractor is that we thoroughly check you out from head to toe. We make sure that you’re not having any concussion or blurred vision-type symptoms. We make sure that you are not having any neck pain, whiplash pain, strain, low back pain. Those are the things that we look at.

How we do that is that we do a thorough exam and thorough consultation. In the exam, in the consultation, we’re trying to dive into your history. We want to find out what orthopedic or neurological tests you’re either failing or you’re passing. We also want to do x-rays on your neck and in your spine. We want to find out if anything has shifted or is misplaced now. That’s a subtle thing, people look at that and they go: “Well, you know what, my neck has always been my neck pain.”  But, the thing is is that we want to check and make sure that neck pain is related to the car accident and look for the whiplash-type symptoms.

After the x-rays, we’ll start treatment. With the treatment, it may take weeks, it may take months. I’ve had cases that have taken years. Whatever it’s gonna do, we’re going to take care of you make sure that you get the thorough care that you need.

So, don’t dismiss the car accident. Whether it’s a minor fender-bender or not, you want to make sure that you get checked out, because if you don’t get checked out, those soft tissue injuries, those acute injuries can become chronic injuries later on.

Make sure that you get checked out by some healthcare professional, whether it be the emergency room, whether it be the chiropractor, whether it be a physician, anybody that’s licensed that can handle that. I’m Dr. Tommy Lane with Lane family chiropractic in Carrollwood, Florida.