If a doctor diagnoses you with insomnia instead of fibromyalgia after you repeatedly complained of widespread chronic body pain, you may wonder if you can bring a case against them in court. The answer is yes. Your particular situation falls under a branch of personal injury law called medical malpractice. Although proving a medical malpractice case may seem difficult at first, it may actually not be. Medical malpractice is typically caused by the negligent behavior of a healthcare professional who makes a mistake, such as performing surgery on the wrong body part or misdiagnosing an illness or disease. It's important to understand how fibromyalgia differs from insomnia and what you can do to bring a case against the doctor.
How Does Fibromyalgia Differ From Insomnia?
Although it's not readily understood why fibromyalgia develops, experts attribute other health conditions or problems to its development. For example, the condition may occur if you injure your body in an auto accident, or if you develop a severe infection in one of your organs, muscles or bones. Having a family history of fibromyalgia may also be a factor for the condition. Fibromyalgia tends to mimic other conditions, including insomnia. However, there are several big differences between insomnia and fibromyalgia that set them apart, including how they affect your body.
Insomnia occurs when you can't sleep or fall to sleep at night. The condition can occur from having an underlying health problem, such as arthritis pain and depression, or it can occur when you take medications that interfere with your ability to sleep. It typically affects your body's ability to rest and recover during the night. The symptoms of the sleep disorder include exhaustion, irritation and anxious. Once a doctor locates and treats the underlying cause of insomnia, individuals experiencing the condition typically improve. However, fibromyalgia doesn't improve without specific treatments and medications, and can cause a host of health problems.
Fibromyalgia causes chronic pain in multiple, or widespread, areas of the body, including your joints, muscles and soft tissues of your back, buttocks, neck, legs, and many other body locations. The pain also affects the left, right, upper, and lower areas of the body. The symptoms typically include involuntary muscle twitches, spasms, cramps, and other strange and aggravating movements. It's also possible to affect your body's nerves, including those located in your legs and face. Fibromyalgia pain can occur at different times of the day and night, as well as range in severity. Insomnia is one of the side effects of fibromyalgia pain because the condition can keep you up at night.
The doctor should've taken all of the problems mentioned above into consideration when they examined you over the course of your visits, including how long you complained of pain and the areas you complained about. Your incorrect diagnosis may have prevented you from improving.
You can take steps to obtain compensation for your misdiagnosed condition by hiring a personal injury lawyer.
How Can You Move Forward With Your Case?
One of the things a personal injury attorney may look at is if the doctor asked you about the extent, intensity and longevity of your pain. Fibromyalgia pain usually lasts longer than three months. In addition, if you still experienced the same health problems after taking medications for insomnia, it should've alerted the doctor that something else was going on with you, including fibromyalgia.
Doctors generally use special testing to diagnose fibromyalgia. The test looks at 18 different areas or pressure points of the body that can experience pain, including in the neck, back and hips. If you complain of pain in at least 11 of these pressure points, the doctor should diagnose you with fibromyalgia. If the doctor still needed clarification for your condition, they can take blood tests to measure your blood count or another designated testing method that indicates inflammation in your body.
Once an attorney has the evidence they need, they may move forward with a medical malpractice claim. However, you should consult with an attorney to find out how they may proceed with your case.
For more details about your misdiagnosis, contact a personal injury lawyer today. You can click for more information on what an attorney can do for you and how to contact one.
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