Experiencing a car accident is often far more damaging to victims than they may immediately realize. Even a relatively small accident is potentially harmful, sometimes leaving victims significantly injured.
Numerous injuries you might sustain in a car accident are not visible and may not cause pain for a few hours or even days afterward, so it is always important to seek out professional medical care as soon as you can. In some cases, you may avoid unnecessary pain and suffering, or even prevent a fatal condition.
Pain in your abdomen after an accident
While many kinds of pain may cause concern, if you feel pain in your abdomen after a car accident, you must seek out emergency medical care immediately. This pain may indicate a either organ damage or internal bleeding, both of which require emergency care as soon as possible, or else they may turn deadly.
Organ damage does not always cause pain initially, if only a small portion of the organ suffered harm. Over time, the organ loses its ability to function because of the damage, and then may cease functioning altogether, which is organ failure. Once an organ fails, the pain is significant and debilitating. without successful emergency care, once one organ fails, the rest of your organs will subsequently fail, which is an exceptionally painful death.
Likewise, internal bleeding is also potentially deadly. If you lose enough blood internally, your body simply cannot function, and may shut down rapidly. Also, a very small injury site may not produce significant blood loss, but does encourage infection if left untreated. Should an infection take hold, once it grows big enough, it will spread through the bloodstream to other organs, infecting your entire body.
If these seem like harsh descriptions, please consider just how serious these injuries often are and seek out immediate attention if you have any abdominal pain following an accident. You can sort out the medical costs and other losses later.
Head and back injuries
Other injuries may produce ongoing pain and suffering, even if they are not fatal, so seeking a medical examination after an accident is important in all cases. Injuries to the head or neck and back may take hours or up to a week or so to produce pain, but once they do it is often enough to completely disrupt your personal and professional life.
A blow to the head during the accident may produce a minor brain injury, which can affect you in many ways, often causing ongoing headaches and nausea and other disorienting symptoms. If left undiagnosed and untreated, a minor brain injury may continue to impact you for up to a year, more than enough time to ruin a career or personal relationships.
Injuries to your soft tissue or to your spinal column may also take some time to cause pain, although usually only a matter of hours. Many victims of whiplash may not feel pain until after going to sleep, for instance.
An injury to the spinal column may pinch nerves, leading to radiating or sharp pain, or tingling and numbness, sometimes permanently.
Your health and well-being are one of the most important things you have, affecting every area of your life. Be sure to seek out all the help you need to keep yourself safe.
