Central Oregon Legal Blog
During a car accident, you may suffer injuries that you do not feel until hours or even days afterward. While most delayed onset injuries do not pose serious threats to the life of a victim, delayed onset injuries to the abdomen are very serious and deserve immediate attention.
If you recently experienced a car accident and just began feeling pain in your abdomen, you should receive emergency medical care immediately. Internal injuries, especially those in your abdomen, can turn fatal quickly. Do not wait until tomorrow or until the next convenient time. If you do, you may not live to see it.
Once you receive professional medical care, you can consult with an attorney to determine whether or not you have grounds for a personal injury claim. An attorney works on your behalf to make sure that you receive all the care you need and keeps your rights protected. An attorney can also work with your medical care providers to ensure that you do not drown in medical debt while you wait for a fair settlement from the accident.
Why is abdominal pain an emergency after a car accident?
Many people do not realize how violent car accidents are. Biologically, human beings are not constructed to survive collisions at high speeds, and our bodies are actually surprisingly fragile, even though they are often very resilient.
Delayed abdominal pain may indicate that you suffered organ damage in the accident, or may result from internal bleeding. Any form of organ damage or internal bleeding is automatically an emergency, medically speaking.
Organ damage, if left untreated, can turn into organ failure in a matter of minutes or hours. Once an organ fails, the human body begins shutting down rapidly. Without proper treatment from a medical professional, a person suffering organ damage may die. This is not generally a process that takes days or weeks, it is one that accelerates in a matter of hours.
Similarly, internal bleeding is a huge risk to a person’s health and safety. Internal bleeding is still blood loss, just like someone who suffers a laceration to a major artery may experience. However, this blood loss is pouring into the body of the victim, possibly affecting other systems’ functions.
At the same time, the source of the internal bleeding is a wide open door to the rest of the body for any infection that develops. If the site of internal bleeding gets infected, that infection may spread through the bloodstream throughout the entire body. This can easily turn fatal in a matter of minutes or hours.
Get the help you need immediately
If you feel pain in your abdomen after a car accident, please stop what you are doing and go to an emergency room. Once your life is out of danger, reach out to an attorney to understand your rights and review your options moving forward.