Shoulder and elbow injuries are some of the most pernicious and annoying injuries. When they occur, it can seem like you’re absolutely fine… but you aren’t. They can keep you from doing your job, driving, and essentially just enjoying your life in many cases. These injuries can cause so much harm. When they occur on the job, you deserve to be compensated for it. That’s literally what workers compensation is for. In this blog, we’ll go over how what some of these injuries are and what rights you have when they occur in the course of doing your job with a workers comp attorney in Los Angeles.
The one main point we always stress with workers compensation is that you’re entitled to it if you’re hurt at work. So many people don’t necessarily realize that. They may think that if they were somehow to blame for their injury, or if their injury wasn’t debilitating, then they don’t quality for workers compensation. That’s not true. If you were hurt at work, you could qualify. If you were hurt at work and the injury was your fault, you could qualify. If the injury was only minor, you could still qualify. Workers compensation is there for workers, it’s there so that you can use it when you’re hurt, bottom line.
Shoulder and Elbow Injuries at Work
When we think of someone injuring their shoulder at work, we tend to think of a job that involves a lot of lifting. Construction, manufacturing, warehouse jobs – those are some of the things that tend to come to mind when we think about someone injuring their shoulder at work. That’s not always how it works, however. Many people injure their shoulders at work even in the most quiet, staid office. A person can injure their shoulder if they have to reach up for a high cabinet every day for office supplies. That’s the kind of injury that could build up over time, or someone could overexert themselves just doing it once. You can never tell.
The same goes for elbow injuries. Sure, these injuries do happen quite often in busy, stressful and dangerous workplaces. On the assembly line floor, in the hospital, on the top floors while building the skyscraper – those are all places where regular folks injure their elbows while working. However, you can hurt your elbows from having bad posture when you spend hours typing on a keyboard every day. You can injure your elbows just from having someone open a door when you least expect it. These injuries can happen in any office, in any work place, and really at any time. When they do, you deserve to be compensated for them.
Shoulder Injuries
The person who loads and unloads heavy palettes from a truck day after day is certainly at risk of injuring their shoulder. That being said, so is the short order cook or the server who picks up and carries food around the diner every day, too. These are the kinds of injuries that, no matter how careful you are or what you do to prevent them can occur seemingly at random.
The shoulder is one of those parts of the body that’s more complicated than it looks at first glance. For most of us, our understanding of the shoulder consists of a ball with a socket joint. Of course, the shoulder is so much more than that. Ligaments, muscles and bones are both inside and around the joint. Indeed, there’s four articulations in the shoulder itself. Sometimes, you may even feel pain in your shoulder, but it’s really a problem with your neck. The phrase “shoulder injury” includes quite a range of concerns.
Of all the ways that one can hurt their shoulder while working, one of the more overlooked ones is if you have to do a lot of work with your hands above the level of your shoulder. If you find that much of your day includes lifting things above shoulder height, or pushing while your hands are higher up than your shoulder, you could be at high risk of these kinds of injuries. The shoulder can pull off physical demands that can be quite impressive, but all of that work can eventually take a toll.
Elbow Injuries
When it comes to elbow injuries, many of these are “repetitive stress injuries.” That means that stress was put on the elbow, over and over again, over the course of a period of time. As a result of that, the elbow was weakened and then later injured. However, sometimes a part of your body that wasn’t the elbow is injured but causes pain in your elbow, much like we discussed with the shoulder above. Typically, when that happens with elbows, it’s due to an injury in the spine. Of course, no matter where you suffered your injury while at work, (or where the pain ends up) we can help you to get the compensation you deserve.
One of the most common elbow injuries goes by the fairly innocuous name of “tennis elbow.” Just typing that made us cringe, as that particular injury can be so painful. The scientific name of this injury is “Lateral Epicondylitis” (which is perhaps in part why “tennis elbow” has caught on). Usually, this comes from having made grasping movements over and over again. The actual pain of the injury comes from inflammation on the side of the elbow that’s facing away from you, the outer side. You may have this if it hurts to stretch out your fingers, when you grasp something, or if you find your grip has weakened considerably.
We’ve all heard of “carpal tunnel syndrome.” There’s a syndrome connected to elbow injuries, too. Called “Cubital tunnel syndrome,” it can make your elbows numb and worse. What happens is that the nerve on the inner part of the elbow gets severely irritated, and then you’ll feel a great deal of pain in your pinky and ring finger. As with so many other kinds of injuries, if you feel a striking pain in your pinky or ring finger, contact your supervisor immediately and then get medical attention. You could have a workers compensation case.
Attorneys for Elbow and Shoulder Injuries
If your clavicle is broken, or if your rotator cuff tears, you could suffer elbow and shoulder injuries. If you’ve ever tried to move after hurting your shoulder or elbow, you can know how hard it is to function with even a minor injury. It can make doing your job flat out impossible. These injuries are rarely the kind of thing that a person can “tough out.” To properly and completely heal from them, often the elbow, shoulder, or even other parts of the body have to be immobilized. That means that you can’t do your job, and have to take time off.
Obviously, no one wants to do that. You want to work and get paid. That’s why workers compensation exists. We can work to get you compensation for your medical bills while you’re immobilized and healing. The last thing you should have to do while you’re rehabbing your shoulder or elbow is to worry about your job. Your focus needs to be on your own health, your own body. That’s why you should trust the experts to get you your workers compensation.
With us on the case, you’ll have someone who knows the law by your side every step of the way. If you have any questions about the process, you can ask them as we go. Indeed, we’re not done until you get the compensation you deserve. We know it’s not easy to ask for help, so we’ve made it as simple as possible to contact us for a free consultation. All you have to do is give us a call at (818) 975-3080. From there, we’ll sit down with you and figure out how to help your case.
