Ottawa Lawyer | A Parent Faces A Child’s Injury
OTTAWA PERSONAL INJURY LAWYER – When your child has been injured, there is the impatience to know what your child’s injuries are and what the future holds. That may be followed by the agony of having to make vital decisions for your child’s health care with no real rational way to determine if you are doing the right thing. Basically, it is blind faith in doctors and nurses who are total strangers that will guide you through that process. You will have highs and lows as your child’s medical condition changes. You face exhaustion because you have not slept and because staying positive when your child is hurt is so tiring when all you want to do is cry.
When the parents come to me they have been there and felt all that. By the time they come to me, their child’s condition, for better or for worse, is stable. Now it’s time to get to business. Now it is time to deal with the piles of papers and the message slips to phone insurance adjusters who have already “popped in” to see you at the hospital and who want to follow up with you “when you are feeling a bit more like talking”.
The parents have managed to pull themselves together to get to my office. They have changed out of the t-shirt with the 3-day old cafeteria soup stain on it. The dad might have shaved. The Mom may have lipstick on for the first time in weeks. But the truth is, it is really, really tough. Telling yet another stranger the story is hard. It feels really strange and uncomfortable telling the story to a lawyer. The parents are worried. The lawyer is going to think we want money because our child is hurt. She is going to think we’re in this for the money. It feels wrong somehow.
But the truth is, the lawyer knows that all you want is for your child to get better. If your child could get better and be fine, or even almost fine, you would not be that lawyer’s office. You are only there because your child is not fine. Your child is going to need whatever help is available. And, you have learned from the hospital that the help your child needs costs money. In some cases, lots of money will be needed to cover your child’s basic medical needs that will not come from OHIP. You are at the lawyer’s office because you know that you need expert advice to make this right, or close to right, for your child.
It is a very difficult thing to call a lawyer about making a claim when your child has been seriously injured –a very difficult thing that is superimposed on an extremely difficult situation. Difficult, but important. Your child deserves to receive all of the available resources to ensure that he or she recovers to the full extent possible and participates in life as quickly, fully and comfortably as possible. To the extent that complete recovery and participation is not possible, your child deserves compensation for that loss. So you take a deep breath and you do it.
Has your child been injured in an Ottawa accident? A top personal injury lawyer can help you make a claim for children’s injury compensation. For more information, contact the Ottawa child injury lawyers at Auger Hollingsworth by email [email protected] or by phone at (613) 233-4529.
