3 Reasons To Keep A Personal Injury Journal
Posted on: 16 November 2021
Were you recently injured and planning to sue the responsible party for compensation? If so, know that it's important to keep a personal injury journal. Here are a few reasons why you need to do so.
Your Mediation And Litigation Can Take A Long Time
Everything is going to be very fresh in your head at the time you are going through your recovery soon after the injury. You are going to remember that pain and discomfort, and imagine that there is no way that you'll be able to forget what you went through. However, the process of mediation can be several months away. If you end up taking your case to trial, it will take even longer. Are you going to remember all of the details of your injury by the time you go through these legal processes? Chances are that you'll forget a lot between when the injury took place and when you reach a settlement.
Your Injury Needs To Be Rated Regularly
You are going to be asked about the degree of your injury at any given point during the recovery process. This can help determine how much you request for pain and suffering, but you need to be able to recall it correctly. Part of keeping an injury journal will involve you regularly rating the pain and discomfort of your injuries on a scale of 1 to 10. This will allow you to compare one day or week to the next, and accurately remember how you were recovering.
There are also other things you'll want to track, such as range of motion. You'll want to know how limited you were at moving your arms, legs, back, neck, or any other part of your body that was injured. You can then track how your range of motion has improved over time.
Your Medications Need To Be Tracked
It is important to also keep track of what medications you were taking to treat your injury, and what those dosages are. This is because taking pain medications can easily cause your pain and discomfort to be lower than what they would be without the medication. You won't be able to remember months down the road how much of a medication you were taking and how it helped you feel better in the moment.
Reach out to your personal injury lawyer for more information about what you should be documenting in your injury journal.
Share