Whether it is a motor vehicle collision or a slip and fall, all types of accidents can result in chronic pain for the plaintiff. This long-lasting aftermath can impact every aspect of a person’s entire life – from their ability to continue their job, over their personal relationships, to their general quality of life.
What Is Chronic Pain?
As per definition, chronic pain describes any type of pain which lingers outside of injury or painful stimulus for three to six months or more, which includes the pain suffered as a result of cancer, disease, or even an unknown cause. Going by this definition, it has been found that up to half the population may be suffering as a result of chronic pain, the majority of which are seniors and women. If it is due to an accident and can be proven in court, with the assistance of personal injury lawyer in Edmonton, then you can be compensated.
While chronic pain needs to be ongoing to be defined as such, symptoms can also come and go and, as is the case for most people, also vary in severity.Under Alberta law, chronic pain doesn’t fall under the definition of minor injuries, which means it cannot be capped as such and neither can the general damages that have been suffered by any accident victim with chronic pain.
What Is The Difference Between Chronic Pain And Acute Pain?
Unlike chronic pain, which is typically spread out across multiple parts of the body, acute pain is localized to the area in which injury was inflicted. During the healing process, acute pain will linger until the injury is fully healed.
What this means it that acute pain has a purpose. It is meant to signal that a physical injury has been sustained and thus, the person needs to adapt by taking it easy and letting their body heal. This is as opposed to chronic pain which does no such thing. Even after an injury is physically fully healed, chronic pain continues to linger and impact a person’s life for no discernible reason.
Chronic pain is equal to pointless suffering and can make every single area of a person’s life harder. Oftentimes, chronic pain also impacts a person’s psychological health due to the impact pain has on a person’s mood. Due to the unknown factors of chronic pain, there is still no real treatment since all tests and attempts have come to no real conclusion. Success rates regarding all forms of treatment are low and have doctors and researchers frustrated all across the globe. Of course, this is still incomparable to the patients’ suffering.