On March 15, 2025, TikToker @sweetmamahat got into a head-on collision at work. Someone decided to take a left turn when the light was still red and drove straight into her car. She was driving and had two coworkers as passengers.
While she called the police to report the accident, her coworker was on the phone with their supervisor. The supervisor told them to finish their shift and then visit the walk-in occupational health workers’ comp clinic or the emergency department when they were done.
“Now, this is a good time to tell you that we were on the job for a major healthcare corporation as mobile crisis clinicians when the accident happened,” she explained.
“Since it was the first and second day of the two people who were in the car with me, I decided to take one for the team. I said I would finish the shift as the longest-standing member.”
So, her new coworkers went off to seek medical care. When she was done, she visited the occupational health walk-in clinic. She told the nurse that she had seen the accident coming and braced herself for the impact.
Four hours later, she had a headache, neck pain, body pain, and all of her joints hurt. They were starting to swell up.
The nurse gave her pain relievers and muscle relaxers. She was instructed to call the next morning if she wasn’t feeling any better. A couple of days later, she still wasn’t feeling better.
By then, she had already called out of her full-time job for a couple of days. She went back to the occupational health clinic and got her ankle and wrist X-rayed.
Her neck and shoulder were in the most pain. She was referred to physical therapy, which she went to every week. Overall, she saw a total of four different providers, and each one dismissed her pain symptoms. They all seemed to think that she was looking for excuses to get out of work.
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The fourth provider cleared her without any restrictions, so she was free to go back to work. Her workers’ comp case became null and void at that point. She tried to go back to work the next day, but she only made it through five hours of her shift.
She realized that she couldn’t turn her head and could barely move her shoulders or neck. So, she went home and took a nap. The next day, she went straight back to the occupational health clinic and demanded that they find out what was wrong.
It was only after she got a little snappy that the provider actually took her case seriously.
Finally, she was sent to the emergency department’s doctor, and they determined that she had a severe concussion. The doctor stated that she should’ve been doing concussion protocol for the past three weeks and needed to start immediately.
One month after the accident, she got to see a neck doctor, who told her that her issues should’ve been addressed right away. He also said that she was lucky she could even walk.
There appeared to be a vertebrae pressing into her spinal column, and she was one good jolt away from potential paralysis or worse.
The doctor put in a request for surgery on her ankle and neck, but the ankle surgery was denied by workers’ comp. She went ahead with the neck surgery and basically got a total neck replacement.
She currently has two rods, 14 screws, and a spacer in her neck. Workers’ comp approved the surgery but denied her compensation, so she went four months of using her own time and donated time from coworkers.
On August 11, she went to a deposition for them to decide whether or not they should pay her for her injury. Her injury could’ve killed her, yet it was not taken seriously, and that’s why the healthcare system is horribly broken.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
