Why Do I Have Pain After My Car Crash?

After an auto collision, one of the first things people may ask themselves is, “Why do I have pain after a car crash?” Knowing why you are in pain can alleviate some of the stress that a car accident triggers. Auto collisions cause a wide variety of injuries that mostly depend on the force of an impact. Some of the injuries can produce life-threatening symptoms that require immediate medical care. However, even a fender bender can prompt you to ask, “Why do I have pain after my car crash?”

After a car collision, you should follow a series of steps that help you file a persuasive insurance claim. One of the most important steps involves seeking medical care from your healthcare provider. If you sustain serious injuries that generate a considerable amount of pain, you should call 911 to notify an emergency response team about your medical condition. Sometimes, the symptoms that develop after a car accident take days, even a couple of weeks to materialize. 

Can you still file an insurance claim to recover the cost of medical care if you experienced delayed pain? The answer is yes, but you should contact one of the experienced personal injury attorneys at Morgan & Morgan to help you file a convincing insurance claim and possibly a civil lawsuit against another party for committing one or more acts of negligence.

Nearly 50 million Americans suffer from non-fatal injuries each year because of the outcome of an auto accident. Most of the injuries, such as bruises and fractures, appear right away. However, some injuries like a concussion or internal organ damage do not develop symptoms until long after an auto collision. Even if you feel healthy after a car crash, you should still visit your healthcare provider to ensure you are not vulnerable to developing delayed painful symptoms.

Since 1988, the personal injury lawyers at Morgan & Morgan have recovered more than $20 billion in monetary damages for our clients. This includes clients that developed painful symptoms days or weeks after a car collision. If you sustained delayed painful symptoms after a car crash, you should schedule a free case evaluation with one of our highly-rated personal injury lawyers.

Why Do Some Car Accident Injuries Cause Delayed Pain?

The type of car accident injuries sustained determines whether you feel delayed pain. For example, the symptoms of whiplash sometimes do not develop until several hours after an auto collision. In the minutes that go by after a car crash, the body goes through a period of overdrive, which can delay pain from developing.

Shock
Shock, which often requires immediate medical care, represents an automatic physical and emotional response to experiencing a traumatic event. When someone goes into shock, the victim's blood pressure dramatically declines. The blood vessels that handle blood flow contract to reduce the amount of blood that flows to your vital organs. 
Shock also alters the chemicals in our brains that control emotions. Lack of blood flow to vital organs frequently causes a loss of sensation, which prevents a car crash victim from feeling pain.

Adrenaline Rush
Shock is not the only automatic response the body makes in the aftermath of an auto collision. Adrenaline, which is also referred to as the “fight or flight” chemical, forces your body to transform into a status of self-preservation. When adrenaline pumps, the pain you should typically feel subsides until the adrenaline rush dissipates. Adrenaline transfers the blood normally sent to vital organs to muscles, which makes a car crash victim temporarily feel much stronger.

Inflammation
Aftershock and adrenaline diminish in strength, inflammation takes over to generate a longer-term impact on delayed pain. Chemicals that reduce pain flow into the injured parts of your body. The result is the pain you should feel delays until inflammation decreases and your body returns to a near-normal state. Inflammation can mask the pain for a few hours or several days, depending on the severity of your injuries.

What Should I Do if I Experienced Delayed Pain After a Car Accident?

Whether you feel pain right after a car accident or several days after the collision, you should seek immediate medical care. For serious injuries, you should receive emergency medical care at the closest hospital or medical center. Receiving the results of diagnostic tests informs a healthcare provider about how to treat your injuries. If you do not seek medical care after a car accident, the painful symptoms of your injuries might get much stronger.

Another reason why you should seek immediate medical care concerns the insurance claim you plan to file. Waiting to seek medical care tells an insurance company that you did not sustain any injuries from an auto collision. The result of waiting to seek medical care might lead to a denied insurance claim. If you want to file a civil lawsuit against another party that committed one or more acts of negligence, you have little chance of a judge hearing the case awarding you monetary damages because you waited to receive medical care.

What Are the Most Common Injuries That Delay the Feeling of Pain?

Although many types of injuries caused by a car accident are physical, you also might suffer from emotional pain. Emotional issues such as fear, anxiety, and depression can take much longer to develop. Knowing the common injuries that trigger delayed pain allows your healthcare provider to conduct the proper diagnostic tests.

Concussion
A concussion represents a milder type of a traumatic brain injury. You might feel mentally sharp after an auto accident, only to start experiencing pain such as intense migraine headaches. Because a considerable amount of time passed after the car crash, you might not associate the painful headaches with the car collision. Other concussion symptoms that often develop days after a car crash include confusion, dizziness, and temporary memory loss.

Whiplash
Whiplash often causes intense neck pain, as well as intense pain in one or both shoulders. The strength of the impact determines the level of pain that you feel. Whiplash tears many body parts, including tendons, muscles, and ligaments. However, because of your body’s inflammatory response to the pain generated by whiplash, you might not feel pain in the neck and/or shoulder until days after the auto accident.

Damage to Soft Tissue
The natural reaction after a car accident is to take care of visible injuries, such as cuts, bruises, and abrasions. If neglected, soft tissue damage can trigger unrelenting delayed pain that requires immediate medical attention. Sprains and strains can produce painful symptoms in vulnerable tendons and muscles. As with whiplash, the inflammation that grows stronger after a car crash can conceal the painful symptoms of the damage to soft tissue.

What Are the Painful Delayed Symptoms That I Need to Recognize?

The key to answering the question, “Why do I have pain after a car crash “is to detect the delayed symptoms caused by one or more injuries.

Mood Swings
Not every delayed painful symptom involves a physical issue. Some types of injuries trigger delayed painful emotional symptoms. This is especially true if you went through a traumatic auto accident. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is the leading cause of mood swings. To recognize the signs of emotional issues after a car crash, you should schedule an appointment with a licensed mental health therapist. As with medical bills, the cost of attending therapy sessions is covered when you file an insurance claim and seek monetary damages by filing a civil lawsuit against another party.

Back Pain
Back pain develops hours or days after a motor vehicle accident for the same reason why pain develops late for whiplash and tissue damage. Inflammation becomes strong enough to mask back pain. As adrenaline wanes and inflammation subsides, you might feel a piercing pain, especially in the lower back. Back pain, whether delayed or instant, can be strong enough to cause you to hunch over in agony. Delayed back pain also might be a sign of a serious spinal injury.

Headaches
Even with government-approved safety restraints, a car collision can force your head into the dashboard, steering wheel, or front side door. Although you might feel a dull throbbing sensation, headaches that result from a car accident often do not develop until at least a few hours after the incident. The delayed development of headaches is often associated with whiplash and concussions. If you fail to address the delayed development of headaches, you risk the growth of blood clots in the brain that can be life-threatening.

What Happens if I Ignore Delayed Pain?

Because painful symptoms of an injury might develop hours or days after a car crash, you might not associate the painful symptoms with the collision. Ignoring painful symptoms of any kind can result in an injury becoming worse over time. Another reason for not ignoring painful symptoms is you have a limited amount of time to file a civil lawsuit that seeks monetary damages. Most states have established a statute of limitations that runs between two and four years.

Ignoring delayed painful symptoms hurts your chances of getting an insurance claim approved. It also negatively impacts your case during a civil lawsuit. Both an insurance company and the judge hearing your case will have doubts about the severity of your injuries because you did not seek treatment for them when they developed.

How Can a Car Accident Attorney Help Me?

Whether you experience pain right after a car accident or days down the road, you should contact a state-licensed personal injury lawyer to help you file an insurance claim and civil lawsuit. A personal injury attorney who specializes in handling auto collision cases helps you gather and organize the evidence you need to file a successful claim. Right after a car crash, you should take photos of the accident scene, as well as get the names and contact information of every witness.

A personal injury lawyer conducts a thorough investigation that includes examining the physical evidence, as well as the information presented in the official police report. Your legal counsel interviews each witness to verify the credibility of the evidence collected at the scene of the crash. A car accident lawyer also helps you draft a persuasive insurance claim and prepares you to participate in the trial phase of the litigation process.

After an auto accident, you need to act with a sense of urgency, especially if you do not know the answer to the question, “Why do I have pain after a car crash?” Schedule a free case evaluation today with one of the experienced car accident representatives at Morgan & Morgan.