Sciatica and sciatic nerve pain can be big problems after a car accident. Many victims find themselves with sudden shooting pain down the back of their leg in the months after a crash. This pain can leave you unable to drive and make it hard to work physical jobs and difficult to even sit down and focus on non-physical work tasks. But can you sue for this pain?
Generally, you can sue for any physical harm and pain that results from a car accident in Maryland. This could certainly include sciatic pain, but the difficult part is that you have to link this pain to the accident. Our lawyers can help you do this, but the defense will definitely try to challenge you on this point in your case.
For a free case assessment, call our Maryland personal injury lawyers from Rice, Murtha & Psoras today at (410) 694-7291.
What Damages Can You Claim in Car Accident in Maryland for Sciatica?
Generally speaking, car accident lawsuits can allow you to claim damages for any harm that results from the crash and the injuries it causes. This can include immediate effects like the fear of the crash and the pain of the injury, as well as the economic harm you face soon after: car repair bills and medical bills. However, you can also claim compensation for lingering effects, such as ongoing lost wages from a disability or pain and suffering from a long-term injury.
In many cases, sciatic pain will fit into that final category: ongoing pain and suffering. However, sciatic pain can leave you with more than just pain. Sciatica can make it hard to walk, stand, or do physical labor, potentially interfering with your ability to work. Even sitting down to drive or do work at your desk can be difficult if you face a sciatica flare-up.
When you file a car accident case, our Aberdeen car accident lawyers can help you incorporate damages for all of these harms into your claim. That can help you get compensation for the medical treatment, rehabilitation, and potential back surgeries needed to treat your sciatica, but it can also include compensation for the pain and suffering, the discomfort, and the lost enjoyment of life you face because of your chronic pain.
What Exactly is Sciatica?
Understanding your injury can help you understand how the car accident caused this injury and why you face ongoing sciatic nerve pain. This will also be important when it comes time to include damages for sciatica in your car accident case because it will help you understand how we can prove that the crash was responsible for your pain.
The sciatic nerve runs from the lower back where it hooks up to your spinal cord and it goes down through the buttocks and down the back of your leg. If this nerve is compressed or impinged in your lower back, or if there is damage to the nerve itself, it can cause pain that shoots down your butt and leg. Sciatica – the name of the condition where you face sciatic nerve pain – can also come with numbness in the area.
Many people with sciatica or sciatic nerve pain find the pain extreme. This pain can make it very hard to go about your day, especially when driving or sitting. It can make you restless and make it hard to concentrate on anything but the pain. In some cases, sciatic nerve pain can even cause weakness or cause trouble for controlling your bladder or bowel movements, according to the Mayo Clinic.
In many cases, the root cause of the pain is at the root of the nerve: there is an injury to your lower back that causes the pain to go down your leg. This can be caused by a traumatic injury, such as impact to your low back during a car crash.
Often, the injury is treated with stretching and physical therapy, especially focusing on posture and flexibility. Over-the-counter painkillers are also helpful along with steroid (usually hydrocortisone) injections. Although the pain might be corrected with surgery, spinal surgery is risky, so this is only an option in cases where the effects involve bladder or bowel control issues.
Proving Sciatica was Caused by a Car Accident in Maryland
In order to get compensation for an injury in a car accident lawsuit, you have to prove that the injury was caused by the car accident. At first blush, it might not be obvious that pain in your leg could be caused by a car crash if you did not suffer a leg injury in that crash. That is why it is important to understand what causes sciatic nerve pain and bring your case to a lawyer who can connect that injury with the injuries in your car accident.
In the immediate aftermath of your crash, you might not notice the sciatic nerve pain. It often takes a few days or even weeks of healing before you will start to notice nerve pain, making it difficult to say that it was caused by the accident that happened days or weeks earlier. However, our lawyers can use your medical records to show that your back injury – which should have been caught by a medical exam, an MRI, or your own discomfort on the day of the crash – was indeed caused by the car crash. We can then call medical experts to connect your sciatica to the back injuries and show that the injury is indeed linked to your car accident.
We may also need to provide medical records to show that you did not have sciatica as a preexisting condition and rule out that it developed naturally, separate from the car crash.
From there, the only thing left is to calculate damages and determine how much this injury should be worth.
Call Our Maryland Car Accident Lawyers Today
If you now face sciatica pain after a car accident, call (410) 694-7291 for a free case review with the Baltimore car accident lawyers at Rice, Murtha & Psoras.