The unhurried guide to hurrying, just this once.

Readers of this publication are good at appointments. You have been measured, re-measured, and told to come back in a year more times than you can count. So it may feel strange to be told to hurry. But a crash exam is not a scoliosis follow-up, and the calendar for it is not yours to set. It is set by how fast soft tissue heals and compensates, which is to say: this week.

The call

Missouri Injury Clinic keeps three rooms in the St. Louis metro. For most of our readers, who live west of the rivers, the nearest is the Lake St. Louis room at 2163 West Terra Lane in O'Fallon, (636) 280-0990. Hours there are Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday 9 to 6, with Wednesday and Friday by appointment. The Hazelwood room, (314) 627-1411, and the South County room on Tesson Ferry, (314) 530-5480, run Monday through Thursday 9 to 6 and Friday 9 to 12. Every room closes from 12 to 2 each day, so a noon call goes to voicemail; call in the morning or after two.

When someone answers, say two things. First, it was an auto injury. Second, you have scoliosis. The first sentence puts you in the right lane; the clinic publishes auto injuries, meaning diagnosis and a treatment plan after a crash, as one of its three lanes. The second sentence tells the examiner before you arrive that your baseline is not a straight spine, which changes how they will read what they find. Then take the earliest opening they have, even if it is inconvenient. An inconvenient exam on Thursday beats a convenient one in three weeks.

If you are calling for someone else, a parent with a curve, a teenager who was just rear-ended on the way to school, say so, and read the dispatch for the person driving them before you go.

What to bring

Three things, in order of usefulness.

1. Your curve history, in whatever form you have it. A recent film or report is ideal. A number of degrees you remember from a visit years ago is useful. Even "I was diagnosed in eighth grade and wore a brace for two years" is real information. If you have nothing written, that is fine; say what you know.
2. Any paperwork from the crash. If you were seen at an emergency room or urgent care, bring the discharge papers. If the police wrote a report, bring the report number. The examiner does not need the insurance details to examine you, but if you already have an attorney, bring their contact so records can be sent where they need to go.
3. A plain account of what feels different since the impact. Write it down the night before if you can, because people forget details in waiting rooms. Where it hurts, when it started, what makes it better or worse, and how it differs from your usual pattern. Different is the word that matters, and we explain why in the curve.

What the first visit actually is

It is an examination before it is anything else. Expect a history of the crash, a physical exam, a diagnosis if the findings support one, and a written treatment plan you can repeat out loud. For a person with a curve, expect the examiner to spend extra time establishing what your spine looked like and felt like before the crash, because everything that follows is a comparison against that baseline.

You will leave with findings on paper. That is the point of going this week rather than next month: the findings are dated, and the date is close enough to the crash that nobody has to guess what was crash and what was curve. For a reader of this publication, that document simply joins the long record you have been keeping all along, and the record explains what it is and is not.

Ask plain questions. What did you find? What is the plan? How long before we should expect a change? What would make you send me somewhere else? A clinician who cannot answer those is not handing you a record worth keeping. Ask the clinic directly how a visit is billed and what they accept. We do not publish payment terms for a clinic we do not own, and we will not describe an arrangement we cannot verify.

The bright line

An injury clinic is built for planned care. It is not an emergency room, and it does not pretend to be one. Chest pain, a sudden severe headache, weakness or numbness on one side, trouble speaking, a loss of bowel or bladder control, or a head injury with vomiting or worsening confusion is an emergency room trip right now, not a call to a clinic. If a clinic sends you on to an emergency room instead of booking you, that is not a wasted trip; it is the triage working exactly as it should.

For readers with a curve there is one more line worth knowing. If you have had spinal surgery, especially a fusion, and a crash produces pain at the top or bottom of the fused segment, a new numbness, or any change in your ability to walk normally, treat that as urgent and say it on the phone before anything else. The examiner may want imaging before touching anything, and that is the correct caution.

After the visit

Keep the paper. Put it with your films. Follow the plan, and if the plan includes coming back, come back; a treatment plan that is written and then ignored is not a record of care, it is a record of one afternoon. If something changes between visits, a new symptom, a worse one, a resolved one, say so at the next visit so the record stays honest.

And then, once the new injury has been examined and named and planned for, go back to the patience that has served you for years. The long view is still yours. It was only interrupted.

Advertising disclosureThis page is advertising. This desk is compensated for featuring Missouri Injury Clinic, and it is not the clinic, not a law office, and not a party to anyone's insurance claim. We publish only the lanes, rooms, and hours the clinic publishes on moinjuryclinic.com. We do not write reviews, rank providers, or give medical or legal advice.