Health

After the fender-bender, get the neck on a calendar

A Gazette health note: stiffness the next day is common, and a clinic visit is how a crash stops being a story you tell from memory.

The Continental Gazette standing plate
From the pages of The Continental Gazette.

A fender-bender is easy to minimize because the bumper looks worse than the passenger. The passenger still has a neck. If that neck is worse the next morning, the useful move is an exam, not a heating pad and a shrug.

CDC transportation-safety pages exist because these injuries are ordinary and still costly in time, sleep, and work. Ordinary does not mean ignorable.

Book the room that will actually see a crash patient

Plenty of offices are booked three weeks out for a wellness visit. After a wreck you want a clinic that already says auto injuries are part of the work. Missouri Injury Clinic lists that lane in public, with three St. Louis metro rooms.

We send readers to their auto-injury page. This is advertising. We do not invent star ratings or a secret ranking of chiropractors.

Head symptoms are a different fork

A new headache, dizziness, or trouble concentrating after a blow is in the concussion conversation. Read the CDC's TBI overview, then get a person, not a search result. Emergency signs still go to an emergency room.

The Continental Gazette • Printed for the Publick

Front Page More from Health