Car Accidents: 101

On November 19, 2010 Clint and I were going on our first dinner by ourselves after Blaze being born. We were excited to get out of the house and have some "adult" time. We got all dressed up, dropped Blaze off at my sister in law's and headed to town. We were sitting still at a red light for about a good minute, catching up on "adult talk" when BOOM!!!! A vehicle "didn't see us stopped", rear ended us and in result pushed us into a utility truck that was sitting in front of us.

The police came. I had to take a lovely ride to the hospital on the most comfortable stretcher with a neck brace on. I thought my whole body was broken. It really is amazing the impact of a vehicle has on your body. Your body aborbs so much energy during a wreck. After x-rays, I was sent home with muscle relaxers, pain killers and a headache that wouldn't quit. Clint didn't go to the hospital because he was trying to be the care taker and make sure I was ok. Men. The minute we walked out of that ER is when we started making mistakes. I had never been in a wreck before where there were injuries so I had no idea what to do next or really what to do at all.

We were told so many different things to do. All the information we got from the responsible party's insurance was, "Pay for all your medical bills and we will reimburse you when there is a settlement made." Ok, I don't know about y'all but we don't necessarily have a disposable income to spend thousands of dollars on medical bills for an accident that wasn't our fault! Sheesh! If that is not enough to make a person turn red then maybe you have blue blood or something. That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard! It is MY responsibility to take time off of work, have tests done, go to doctor's visits, AND pay for them while I wait a year or more to get REIMBURSED!!!!! .... Ok, ok Ok, I'm over it.

I had medical insurance but Clint did not. Now try to go to a doctor without having insurance and not have to pay for the doctor's visit up front. So we went to the chiropractor because they deal with these situations all the time and they agreed to bill insurance and not require any money up front. To make a long story very short, we went to the chiropractor for about 3 months each. I was still having problems with my back so I decided to go to the spine specialist and have a MRI. I had 2 bulging discs this whole time and wasted 4 months of not doing anything about it. Clint also waited to have his shoulder looked at because we didn't have the funds. He ended up having shoulder surgery for his injured shoulder.

We do carry Personal Injury Protection and Underinsured Insurance on our personal policies. I would recommend that you make sure your insurance policies have both of these on them. These are VERY important

Here are a couple of tips from my experience should you ever be in a car accident with injuries although I pray that you never do. 

1. Make sure you get ALL of your injuries checked out by a doctor and get the appropriate testing and imaging.

2. Contact a lawyer. Should you have injuries, a lawyer can guide you through the process and handle your business with the other person's insurance. Also if you do not have medical insurance, a lawyer can give the doctor a letter of protection for your medical bill, if they will accept one. Having a lawyer on your side will ease some of your frustrations with the whole process. On most injury cases, the lawyer will just take a portion of your settlement. You shouldn't be out any money up front in legal costs.

3. Be patient. The process will take a long time and the other insurance company will try to get you frustrated with taking their sweet time and get  you to take a lesser offer.

Hope this helps should you be in this situation!

Love,
Kaci