Your main goal is to get better as fast as possible. To this end you should communicate clearly and effectively with your treating medical professionals and follow their advice carefully.
It is important each time you see your treating medical professionals to tell them not only how you are feeling physically (your body) but also cognitively (for example, concentration, memory, fatigue) and emotionally (for example, anxiety, depression, sleep difficulty). Tell your treating medical professionals how you are feeling in terms of body, mind and emotions.
Many clients are almost embarrassed to discuss their symptoms in detail with their family physician or other medical professionals. They feel they are “complaining”. However, your family physician and your other medical professionals are genuinely interested in helping you get better. The information you are providing them helps them treat you more effectively. So you are not whining or complaining when you present your symptoms to your medical professionals in a complete, organized and truthful fashion, rather, you are giving them information that will help them treat you more effectively.
Moreover, your family physician and your other medical professionals know that you have been injured in a car crash. They know that they will be asked to provide medical legal reports and perhaps asked to come to trial to give evidence. Your family physician and your other medical professionals are busy people who want to focus on treating their patients. They do not, for the most part, want to waste their valuable time sitting around the courthouse waiting to be called to give evidence and then take the witness stand only to be cross examined by an ICBC personal injury lawyer who is trying to undermine their evidence. Your family physician and your other medical professionals would prefer that the case settle than go to court. If the medical legal reports that they are asked to provide are accurate and complete then the chance of your case settling increases significantly. Their medical reports can only be accurate and complete if every time you visit them you are accurate and complete in your presentation.
However, if the case does not settle then your family physician and your other medical professionals will be asked to come to trial to give evidence. Their goal will be to present themselves in court as competent professionals. If their medical reports are accurate and complete then they will look like competent professionals. Again, those reports will be accurate and complete if your presentation to them at each of your visits has been accurate and complete.
In summary, you should present your symptoms truthfully and accurately at every doctor’s visit, including how you are feeling physically, cognitively and emotionally. In this fashion you will help your family physician and your other medical professionals treat you more effectively and help them prepare accurate and complete medical reports which will increase the chance of your case settling. If the case does not settle and goes to trial then the evidence presented at trial will be accurate and complete which will help your physicians look like competent professionals and will help you get justice.