Injuries from accidents can range in severity and have various health consequences. Some of the most challenging types of wounds you can experience are those that cause delayed pain.
Pain that doesn’t begin immediately after the accident can complicate any personal injury claim you pursue while also putting your health at risk. It is helpful to learn more about why delayed pain occurs and what injuries could cause it.
Understanding Delayed Pain
Experiencing delayed pain after an accident is more common than you may imagine. Often, adrenaline and shock can dull discomfort until they wear off. Your body enters into a “fight or flight” response during an accident, which floods your body with hormones that act as natural painkillers. These allow you to function in a high-stress situation by masking pain.
The moment the shock and adrenaline wear off, you can begin to feel stiffness, soreness, and even severe pain from catastrophic injuries.
Inflammation also doesn’t start immediately after you sustain an injury. Instead, it can take hours or days, which is when the first signs of pain may start.
How Long Can Pain Take to Appear?
The type of injury you suffer will impact how long it may take for the pain to appear. Hours after the accident, you may start to feel soreness. Some people may experience a dull ache in their neck or back.
Inflammation can take between 24 and 48 hours to appear. Typically, this is when symptoms of whiplash and even concussions may first be noticed.
Some injuries, however, can take weeks to become obvious. Certain brain injuries, internal bleeding, and nerve damage often don’t show any symptoms right after an accident, which can not only put your well-being in danger but could also affect your legal claims.
How Delayed Pain Can Complicate Personal Injury Claims
Imagine you were involved in a distracted driving accident in which the other party ran a red light because they were texting while driving and subsequently hit your vehicle. To prove that you deserve compensation, you must show that the other party breached the duty of care they owed you and that their conduct led directly to compensable losses.
If you don’t feel pain until days or weeks later, it can be much harder to demonstrate that the party who ran the red light caused the injuries from the car accident. Often, insurance companies will pounce on this delay and present it as evidence that it wasn’t the collision that caused your pain. This could put you at risk of not obtaining any compensation.
You may not have clear medical records if you’ve experienced delayed pain. For example, you could have gotten a check-up right after the crash that revealed nothing because the inflammation hadn’t yet begun.
All of these issues can lead insurers to make lowball offers in the hopes that you’re desperate enough to accept, or they may deny your claim outright. That is why hiring an attorney is invaluable. With an attorney, you have a chance to fight for damages to cover your losses.
Contact a Boulder Personal Injury Lawyer at Ferrell Injury Law for a Free Consultation
Personal injury claims that involve delayed pain should rarely be tackled without representation. You will need to have an experienced legal team by your side that knows how to prove causation even when there are gaps in your medical records. A skilled personal injury attorney can negotiate aggressively with insurers so that you can seek what you deserve. The right representation makes a difference.
If you’ve been injured in Boulder, CO, call Ferrell Injury Law for a free consultation with a personal injury lawyer or contact us online.
We proudly serve clients in Boulder and surrounding Colorado communities.
Ferrell Injury Law
2060 Broadway # 360, Boulder, CO 80302
(720) 687-2795
