Welcome back to the blog!

March is Brain Injury Awareness Month, so I am sharing my experiences with brain injury and highlighting resources, writing about topics of interest, answering questions, and spotlighting professionals all month!

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the cause of disability for 5.3 million adults in the US. Despite knowing this statistic, I did not realize that two and a half years after my injury I would not yet have returned to my previous work activities.

If you’d like to learn more about the financial toll of TBI, causes, treatment, and more, please check out my linked blog post from September.

Today’s topic is a tough one — it’s a part of my journey I haven’t discussed much.

Note: this is NOT a sponsored post. I did not receive compensation for sharing my experience with Breyer Law (they actually don’t know I wrote this!)

What to know when seeking legal representation after an accident

When I was rear ended on my way to work August 21, 2018, I thought the worst inconvenience was that I had to cancel my morning clients and hire a rental car. After all, I was lucky enough to walk away from the scene. I’d hit my head, but I wasn’t bleeding and I could drive my vehicle home.

Within a few hours, I developed a headache and felt “off.” I’d been rear ended in the past, and thought I may have whiplash due to the hard hit. I knew it was possible I could have a concussion due to hitting my head. I felt very sleepy, but made an effort to stay awake as that’s what doctors recommend after a head injury.

I also called my primary care physician (who doubled as a chiropractor) to request an appointment. He couldn’t see me for a few weeks, so I called another chiropractor I’d been meaning to connect with for work. I made an appointment to do an intake the next day. I knew my situation wasn’t emergent; in fact there is nothing I loathe more than sitting in an emergency room waiting for care, only to be sent home after several hours and charged a few hundred dollars’ copay. Brian and I called our insurance company to report the accident and initiate the insurance claim against the other driver. My biggest concern at the time was if her insurance was valid; she did not have proof of insurance on her person at the scene and had begged me not to report the accident to my insurance company, stating that she’d been in too many accidents and would likely lose her coverage if I reported the accident. She even said this to the reporting police officer! Her husband finally sent a photo of an insurance card via text message. I mentioned all of this to our insurance company, and they assured me that they would open my claim with her insurance company. Brian and I were leaving town so our insurance company said to drop my car off for repairs and pick it up when we returned and not to worry too much about the accident. “This is why you have insurance,” the agent laughed.

The next day, I was in a great deal of pain. I couldn’t lift my head off the pillow to turn off my alarm when I woke up. I went to physical therapy, the chiropractor, had x rays and was diagnosed with severe whiplash and trauma to the tissue around my brain stem. The headache, dizziness, nausea, disorientation, mood, soreness and other symptoms made sense with my soft tissue injuries and the doctor said I should feel better within two weeks. I was cleared to travel but told to get some rest, take ibuprofen, stretch, and follow up in two weeks. That coincided perfectly with my trip, so I asked for a note detailing the instructions. I also explained that I was under contract to host a “champagne meditation” for lululemon’s 20th birthday party as an ambassador. Was it okay to do that? Yes it was!

My approach at the time was to survive the discomfort as best I could, knowing that I should feel better within a couple of weeks. We went on our trip, I followed doctors orders, and tried to make the best of things.

But then . . .

I didn’t feel better. In some ways, I noticed improvement (I could move my neck better, my back didn’t hurt as badly) but in others I felt worse (my headache hadn’t gone away, I was constantly carsick, I hadn’t slept well).

When we went to pick up my car on our way home from the airport, the auto shop people told us that we had to pay our deductible. Since our policy waives the deductible when the accident is not our fault, Brian called our insurance provider to find out why. As it turns out, after 10 days of attempting to confirm the others drivers policy, our insurance provider had failed to do so.

We were floored.

Since we were headed into Labor Day weekend, we couldn’t make headway on getting a claim opened until after the holiday. Over the holiday weekend, I hit a breaking point with my health. The day after Labor Day I hit a low. Brian had gone back to work, I could barely eke out emails or texts to cancel my clients (I had persistent double vision, trouble word finding), and was pretty sure I had a concussion that wasn’t improving within the “normal” range. My brain-related symptoms got so bad I spent hours trying to make an appointment to see a neurologist, to no avail. No neurologists that I’d contacted would take new appointments from a motor vehicle accident. My cognitive functioning was so poor that I struggled to go through the process of Googling neurologists, dialing through their phone logs, speaking to a human, getting turned down, and figuring out what to do next.

Brian drove me to the chiropractor after he got home from work and he couldn’t understand why I hadn’t been able to make an appointment. I was struggling to find words or explain something I didn’t understand myself. At the chiropractor, while struggling the keep tears from rolling down my cheeks at the reception desk, Dr Steve gently pulled me aside and asked if I’d hired an attorney yet. “No,” I said instinctively, “why?” He told me that it is pretty common to hire an attorney to help manage insurance companies, bills, and these stressors when dealing with extensive injuries.

At that moment, my situation sunk in a bit.

I needed help.

The hours we had spent on the phone with our insurance company (now two weeks of unsuccessful attempts to get our claim open), the inability to get an appointment to get my head checked out, the confusion about what was happening with my brain and my body.

I had no clue how to find an attorney. I had looked down on “ambulance chasers” . . . I was a perfectly capable human being and I should be able to take care of this. Isn’t this the whole reason I have insurance? And how do I even find an attorney? I didn’t want any of my friends to know I was hiring an injury attorney. Should I just watch tv and call someone from a commercial?

Yes, you should call someone you see on a commercial. The Husband and Wife Law Team! I’m their actual client.

I looked at Dr Steve and asked, “Can you recommend someone?” He said he would text me a name.

Two and a half years later, I have been through the process with two law firms and am a little older and (hopefully) wiser. I know longer think it’s shameful to hire a personal injury attorney; I’m incredibly grateful to the second firm who graciously represented me!

I share the story of where I came from, in hopes to inform you as to why I recommend you ask these questions of prospective legal counsel.

The top three questions you should ask before you hire an attorney

So you don’t make the mistakes I did!

Are they willing to go to trial?

When I hired my first attorney, I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t know there was a difference between a trial attorney and a regular attorney. (Spoiler alert: insurance companies do!).

My first attorney was a single practitioner with one paralegal. When I hired my first attorney, he asked me to keep him informed on my health (so I did) and to just follow my doctors orders (so I did). I was lucky to have good health coverage. He would handle everything with the car insurance companies.

Sixteen months into my case, when the other driver’s insurance company had no interest in taking care of their responsibilities, he let me know that I’d need to look for another firm to represent me to try my case.

A follow-up question to ask is who foots the bill to put on a trial? I didn’t know this before my injury, but the onus is on the injured party to prove the case in the US: even though I had been hit (fact, the other driver was cited for the accident), my side would need to gather records, hire expert witnesses, pay filing fees, etc. My original attorney let me know (sixteen months in, after my husband and I had already sunk thousands of dollars out of pocket into my medical care) that we’d need to spend roughly fifty thousand dollars to bring my case to trial.

None of this made sense to me. I was the victim: I’d been following the law, was hit by another party, I was insured, I’d been injured, and I had to pay a lot of money in a gamble to simply get my medical bills covered? That didn’t sit right with me.

Fortunately, when my first attorney (essentially) fired me, my great friend Rebecca lovingly forced me to call The Husband and Wife Law Team. I had given up on my case (and myself). She told me I was worth fighting for and I deserved justice. I wanted to crawl into a hole and be done with it; she encouraged me to just have a chat and see what they said (I’m so glad I listened to her!).

It turns out that The Husband and Wife Law Team are trial attorneys: when they agreed to take my case, they immediately started gathering evidence (like the officer’s body cam, medical records, friends and family statements) and even got my own insurance company to surrender funds into a trust account!

The Husband and Wife Law Team put their own resources into building my case. I didn’t have to pay a dime. The fact that they believed in me, invested in me, and fought for me at one of the lowest points in my life means I am a raving fan of theirs for life!

how often can you expect to communicate with your attorney?

When I hired my first attorney, he asked me to email his office whenever I saw a new provider or received a new diagnosis.

Over the course of two and a half years, my medical team consisted of:

four neurologists
two neuropsychologists
a neuro optometrist
two occupational therapists
two speech language pathologists
three physical therapists
four psychotherapists
chiropractor
massage therapist and soft tissue therapists
EMDR for PTSD
group therapy
vision therapy
autonomic testing, nerve testing and biopsies
botox for migraines
countless medications and other interventions

I list them out to note that I emailed my original attorney a lot. I rarely got an acknowledgment back that the communication was received.

I had one phone call with my original attorney, a few days after I hired him, asking if he’d received a couple emails I had sent that hadn’t been responded to.

The next phone call was months later to discuss my insurance coverage running low and what to do about it.

The fourth and final call was a meeting to discuss next steps. We were told that we needed a second opinion; that we could move on and find a new attorney, or drop our case.

My husband and I were blindsided by that phone call. In the sixteen months since my accident, we had done everything that our attorney had told us to do. We had no idea that our attorney could drop us, we had no idea that the other party’s insurance company could deny our claim, and we had no idea that we might be liable for the hundred thousand dollars of medical liens our health insurance company had on my accident (we actually didn’t know the liens existed then, we were “only” aware of about $40,000 in medical debt at the time).

We were drowning in simply dealing with my medical issues, daily appointments, struggling business, and demands of regular life.

When we switched legal representation, we saw firsthand the difference between a team of trial attorneys vs a single practitioner.

In the first month as a client of Breyer Law, AKA The Husband and Wife Law Team, I heard from my paralegal Brittany more times than the entire time I was a client at my old firm!

In fact, Brittany was my biggest advocate from the moment of my intake interview (where she found opportunities for our secondary health insurance to assist with some bills) to our exit interview (where she zoomed in on her day off to say congratulations on closing our case). I was a client for approximately fourteen months, and in that time I was assigned to Brittany the entire time. She checked in on me proactively, asking how I felt, if I needed support, if I’d like to schedule a call with an attorney, if I had questions, and providing me with updates or progress. I even received thoughtful notes and a surprise mug in the mail! I should mention most of my time as a client was during covid, so despite the turmoil of the world the law firm still managing to treat me with care, move my case forward, communicate proactively, and provide support.

I got to appear in a few commercials chatting about my experience with my first attorney in comparison with The Husband and Wife Law Team. It

Will they tell you the hard truths?

When I hired my first attorney, I gave him my police report and my account of the accident. He told me to provide medical updates, keep him informed of progress, and focus on healing. He would handle the rest.

I thought that, since the other driver was found at fault, cited, and we were both insured, my medical bills would be covered.

I was naive.

As I learned the hard way, the other driver’s insurance company has an entire department dedicated to making sure that claims do not get paid.

When I met with Breyer Law, they made sure to lay out the strengths and weaknesses of my case. An experienced trial attorney reviewed all of my records and laid out my case. He was pragmatic with my husband and me about our case. When they agreed to take my case, they were realistic about the challenges we would face. Despite all of my medical documentation from one of the best neurological institutes in the world, brain injuries are particularly challenging to prove in court due to lack of awareness and invisibility of symptoms.

Each step of the way, my case was round tabled by a panel of experts. The legal process is not easy on injured parties; the other side tried to claim that I was overtreated, that I profited from my brain injury (my empty bank account begs to differ), that I am smart enough to fool my world class doctors (ha!).

Yet, thanks to my attorneys pragmatic feedback I was confident at each point that the advice I was given was sound— even when it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. My legal team also took the time to understand what was important to me (holding the driver and her insurance company accountable, and clearing my medical debt). Breyer Law made it clear that they would fight for me as long as I wanted to fight.

in closing

In January, we finally received an offer (our first, after two and a half years) to settle. I’m grateful that The Husband and Wife Law Team didn’t give up on me, and that they gave me their unbiased expert advice.

what did I learn?

While going through this difficult, lengthy process, I realized that I research doctors, I Yelp restaurants, I interview pet sitters, I Google veterinarians, I sample six different cookies at Costco, yet I picked the first attorney I was offered. Why did I do that??

I wrote this blog post because I don’t want other people to make the same mistake I did.

If this post helps one person find the right attorney, then I will sleep better at night!!

By the way, if you live in the Phoenix area and see me on a commercial for The Husband and Wife Law Team, that’s why I said yes to being on TV! I want others to learn from my ignorance.

Want to practice mindfulness consistently? Text MINDFUL to +1-480-531-9810 to get a free daily mindfulness prompt via text message!

before you go, can you please help me?

I am In the running to be the next Yoga Warrior!

I’m so grateful I made it to the TOP 15 in my group!!! That means I get another week to the next cutoff.

I was selected based on my platform of wanting to make yoga + mindfulness accessible. I currently do that with my daily mindfulness text, this blog, and my Instagram and TikTok content. I have big dreams of doing more to help others, and I’d love your support! Here’s how you can help:

vote for me!

If I win, I’ll be featured in The Yoga Journal + win a $10,000 cash prize to support my work.

Would you be willing to vote for me?

If so, you can cast a FREE vote daily for the next week to get me through the next cutoff! Just click the button below.

You can also pay for additional votes, with 25% of the proceeds going to The Veterans Yoga Project (a 501c nonprofit).

You can vote every 24 hours, so set an alarm or reminder to optimize your voting potential!

Voting to get into the Top 10 in my group closes Thursday, 3/25 at 7pm PST!

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Three Questions to Ask Before You Hire an Attorney: My Brain Injury Journey