Pain Treatment Factors

• March 4 2016
• |   Personal Injury

Let’s say that I have to see a chiropractor every month for years, or perhaps I’m on pain medication for an indeterminate period of time following my injury. Are these factors in my settlement case?

Yes. If you are prescribed pain medication, (a good example of the type of physical pain you’re in), oftentimes you go in and a doctor will ask you, “On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your pain?” You may describe it as a 9, whereas prior to the accident you never described any pain. Then, over time, and treatment, say after 3 months, while you always described it as a 9, it starts to go down to a 7, or a 6, and then after 6 months, it’s down to zero.

They can use that to quantify and say, “Here’s the pain, or the pain was bad for 3 months, and then it slowly decreased. And then, after 6 months, it was back to normal. But for the first 6 months, the client was in pain and had physical pain that is quantifiable, and that pain is only because of the accident.”

Yes. If you are prescribed pain medication, (a good example of the type of physical pain you’re in), oftentimes you go in and a doctor will ask you, “On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your pain?” You may describe it as a 9, whereas prior to the accident you never described any pain. Then, over time, and treatment, say after 3 months, while you always described it as a 9, it starts to go down to a 7, or a 6, and then after 6 months, it’s down to zero.

They can use that to quantify and say, “Here’s the pain, or the pain was bad for 3 months, and then it slowly decreased. And then, after 6 months, it was back to normal. But for the first 6 months, the client was in pain and had physical pain that is quantifiable, and that pain is only because of the accident.”