We all look forward to holidays and days off when we can go on family vacations, but there’s a hidden predator out there on the road: drunk drivers.
It’s these bad apples of society that can literally ruin your life – temporarily or long-term – if your family ends up in a crash and experiences whiplash auto injuries.
Dr. Amy, wants to give you a few extra tips to prevent whiplash auto injuries from occurring in your children:
- After a car accident, check yourself for injuries first, then check your children.
- Make sure they are breathing, and not bleeding.
- If they have any pain immediately after the car accident, remember what each child says to alert the doctors at the hospital.
- Little children are a lot more flexible than older adults but their joints – just like yours – are still susceptible to whiplash auto injuries.
- The symptoms are neck pain, neck muscle stiffness, headache, back pain, dizziness, feeling like the room is spinning, numbness and weakness.
- There may also be head pain.
- Whiplash is graded on a scale of 0 to 4. Here is a chart explaining the differences:
- Grade 0: nothing wrong at all
- Grade 1: no sign of physical damage but neck hurts
- Grade 2: pain in the neck that may be accompanied by inability to fully move the neck and stiffness in the muscles
- Grade 3: changes in vision or slurred speech or other neurological symptoms plus the symptoms from Grade 2.
- Grade 4: paralysis or other serious condition, indicating the whiplash auto injuries may include a fracture or dislocation of the vertebrae.
- Even if you weren’t traveling fast, your child could have still been hurt seriously.
- Sometimes fractures of bones don’t occur during the first 72 hours after a car accident. If your child’s symptoms worsen, take them back to the hospital for repeat x-rays.
Children can get whiplash auto injuries and a car accident may often be unavoidable.
There’s always a positive side to everything, though – Eastside Chiropratic is here to help you through the process of recovery from whiplash auto injuries.
She has treated patients of all ages for these types of injuries.
The sooner you can start the healing process after a car accident, the better you will feel.
