My Personal Injury Story - And How i use it to get YOU paid

April Fools Day 2024 was a Monday. I was working as a public defender, and I had a DWI trial scheduled for that week. Before going home that afternoon, I went to a parkour gym where I was a regular. April Fools 2024 we had a group class on wall climbing. I could feel my right ankle aching from the attempts I had already made to get up our climbing wall, but the class wasn’t over yet so I kept pushing. I took a running start and planted my leg on the wall to propel myself upward the way I was supposed to. I felt my ankle come out from under me. I fell a few feet down to the ground.

This is the part where most people expect me to tell them how much it hurt to rupture my achilles tendon. The truth is that it didn’t hurt at all. Landing from the short drop hurt worse than the injury. All I felt was a moment where my ankle held my weight followed by a moment where it didn’t. Before I even hit the ground I could feel the weakness and knew that my ankle would not hold my weight anymore.

One of the other adults participating in the group class was a nurse. He helped me out of the gym and into the waiting area, and examined my ankle. He told me that it seemed bad, that I should take some anti-inflamatories immediately and get to the hospital when I could. After taking some time to sit and process what had happened, I hopped on my left foot out to my car and drove myself to the hospital using my left foot for the pedals.

I didn’t need the doctors to tell me that the injury was an achilles rupture. I could feel the spot on the back of my ankle where the tendon just wasn’t there anymore. I called my boss at the public defender’s office from the emergency room to tell her that I wasn’t going to be able to be in the office or in court for a while.

It took a surgery, three months in a walking boot and almost a year of physical therapy for me to get back to something approaching my pre-injury life. During that time, I felt the panic as my progress in physical therapy plateaued and left me unsure if my right foot would ever be strong enough to stand on my toes unassisted; or what it would mean for running, jumping, or playing sports if it never did. I felt the quiet shame as thoughtful and sympathetic coworkers tried unsuccessfully to stifle their laughter at my attempts to re-learn how to walk while on the job. I endured the pain and swelling in my thigh and knee as they damaged themselves compensating for the weakness of my injured ankle. I felt the fear as I saw an unexpected bill for the suite where my surgery was performed after insurance decided not to cover that, and the anxiety of trying to figure out how to pay for it.

Today, I am mostly back to normal. I still hesitate before I run or jump. I still feel aches and pains in the parts of my leg which overcompensated for my ankle. But I can run. I can jump. I can play sports. If you have been injured in an accident and are wondering if your body will heal, you will get back to your life, too. It will look different, possibly very different, but you will recognize it on the other side.

I make it my mission to make sure that my clients don’t drown under the weight of bills created by their injuries. The road to recovery is long, and my job is to make sure that bills you don’t know how to pay are never the thing that knocks you off that road. I do that by telling your story in a way that insurers, their attorneys, and if necessary jurors can understand so that they pay you what you are owed. I am uniquely able to do that because unlike most personal injury lawyers, I have been personally injured.