Recovery Timelines After Serious Auto Accident Injuries
Michael Babboni
Car Accidents
One of the most daunting parts of the auto accident experience is facing recovery from serious injuries. While reaching a settlement or taking your case to trial can take quite some time, at least you have an experienced personal injury attorney in your corner helping the process to go smoothly. In many cases with injury, while medical professionals do help, it’s up to you to suffer through days, weeks, months, or even years of the recovery process. The recovery timeline for some of the most common accident injuries are:• Neck injuries – Neck injuries are incredibly common in Florida auto accidents, and the most common of these is whiplash. While some cases of whiplash are relatively mild, others can be quite debilitating for long periods of time. A dislocation or serious vertebrate injury may even require surgery to correct. Recovery times can vary with whiplash and neck injuries, and many can only be fixed with over the counter pain relievers and time. In some instances, full recovery from neck injuries can take months or more.
• Facial injuries – When in a car accident in Florida, the force of the accident or the airbag can cause a myriad of injuries to the face. These may include broken noses, lacerations, broken or missing teeth, and injuries to the eyes. For broken bones, surgery may be required, for lacerations one may need stitches, and other bumps and bruises may require bandaging. Injuries requiring surgery will often take months to heal, while smaller cuts and scrapes may heal in just a few days to weeks.
• Back and spinal cord injuries – During an accident, the force experienced can cause the vehicle to shift violently underneath your body, causing discs in the spine to shift out of place. These can be some of the longest lasting and most devastating non-fatal car accident injuries, some leading to lifelong loss of mobility or disability. Soft tissue injuries are also possible in areas around the back or neck, which can cause temporary loss of mobility to chronic pain. For some with more severe back or spinal cord injuries, recovery can be a lifelong process and some may never fully recover.
• Internal injuries – The force of an accident may also lead to internal injuries that aren’t immediately apparent. While seatbelts are put into place to protect motorists, they only protect when worn correctly. Incorrectly wearing a seatbelt can lead to unbalanced weight and force distribution, which may lead to internal injuries. Internal injuries like muscle sprains and strains may be taken care of with rest and over the counter medications, while more serious internal injuries like bruising and bleeding could require surgery and other forms of swift medical intervention.
• Injuries to the extremities – Broken arms, legs, ankles, wrists, fingers, and feet, while not often a threat to life, can be quite disruptive to your life. The recovery timeline for injuries to the extremities can vary greatly, with a broken limb requiring about 6 to 8 weeks for a full recovery. In some instances, severely broken limbs can require surgery, while others may only need a cast or splint for a few weeks.
The injury experiences one faces after an auto accident in the St. Petersburg region can be expensive medically, and doubly so when one considers the loss of work one may face on top of it. For this reason, it’s important for any person who has been in an automobile accident in Florida to seek the assistance of a skilled and experienced personal injury attorney. If you’ve been in an accident and you need compensation for the injuries you’re facing, contact us at TheStPeteLawyer.com today.