Soft-tissue injury clueless ignorance alert!
One of my little joys as a columnist is the delicious opportunity to publically expose ignorance.
Don’t we all yearn to have been that keener whose hand shot up, aching to enlighten a clueless classroom with the right answer?
It’s particularly satisfying after another student has embarrassedly exposed his or her ignorance with a wrong answer.
And I get to name names!
First off, I will establish my basis for having a great deal of knowledge about the area I am writing about.
I’ve been in the crash injury business for over twenty years, and the majority of my cases include soft-tissue injuries.
Hundreds of injured victims have shared with me the onset, progression and fluctuations of their symptoms, the impact of various care modalities on their recovery, and the long term aftermaths of their injuries.
The careful review of hundreds of reports from specialists in various medical fields has informed me about the medical science.
At times, such as when I am urging my clients to try their best to wean off of passive therapies in favour of more active rehabilitation, I refer to myself jokingly as “Dr. Paul.”
Those who know my writing style are already anticipating the punch line, i.e. that it is my own clueless ignorance I am writing about.
It has taken this many years for me to learn about an aspect of car crash soft-tissue injuries that impacts nearly 50% of my clients.
I have a good friend who hasn’t formally retained me to go after fair compensation on her behalf, but fills me in from time to time about how she’s doing.
She’s the same friend I wrote about in a previous column, who would like “at fault drivers” to be required to share the inconvenience of scheduling and attending therapy, by tagging along with their victims.
She is lucky. Her soft-tissue injuries have significantly resolved.
From time to time, though, she experiences flare-ups which are really quite significant.
For Dr. Paul, the periodic flaring up of symptoms is par for the course. As sure as the earth turns on its axis, there will be ebbing and flowing of symptoms with variations of activity and other factors.
Wisely, my friend didn’t rely on Dr. Paul. She kept close track of the timing of her flare-ups, which was approximately monthly, and consulted with her actual medical doctor.
Wouldn’t you know, but on careful examination and questioning, her doctor diagnosed a particular condition my friend “suffers from,” which impacts on her car crash soft-tissue injury symptoms.
I use quotation marks because the word “suffers” might seem overly dramatic and highly debatable.
This particular condition causes the approximately monthly production of increased levels of a group of cyclic fatty acid compounds called prostaglandin.
The prostaglandin, as I understand it, sensitizes pain sensing neurons, resulting in increased pain signals to be sent from areas of injury to the brain.
On making the diagnosis, her doctor prescribed medication that will hopefully ease the soft-tissue injury flare-ups.
As it turns out, my friend is not alone. In fact, her condition is somewhat widely shared. I am embarrassed that, after all these years, I’ve been clueless about it.
Her condition? Menstruation.
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You might be interested in reading Paul’s related columns:
Soft-tissue injuries can often be the worst kind
Soft-tissue injury compensation is not just for what you see
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