The day of the accident my wife was on her way to a prenatal checkup (the last one before her delivery) when she slowed and stopped for a yellow light, which was turning red.  The driver behind her gunned it to beat the light, realized too late that my wife was not doing the same, and ran into her.  While exchanging information the driver of the other car asked "Why didn't you run it?  Everyone else does!".  I am very lucky that my mother in law and not I was taking my wife to her appointment that day, because I would have likely given that guy a beating.  He was (as far as I'm concerned) blaming my wife's following of the law for causing the accident!  I should mention that this intersection has red light cameras that will get a ticket mailed to your door if you run the light, so that's even more incentive to stop.

     Since the accident happened only a couple miles from the hospital, and the car was drivable, my wife went to her appointment, and was put on a baby monitor for several hours.  Everything appeared ok with the baby so they sent my wife home.  Even though her back hurt, there was nothing that could be done because of the pregnancy.  Her treatment would have to wait until later.  That next week was really tough.  Last minute preparations for the baby, I still have to work full time, and my wife can't hardly do anything because of her back.

     Finally the big day was here.  As excited as we were the day was tempered by the excess pain my wife went through during labor.  She really wanted a natural birth (more, it seamed, than anything else in the world) and was greatly depressed once she chose to get some medication for the pain.  As both the nurse and myself pointed out to her, most women get medication.

     After our daughter was born I was hoping things would get better, after all my wife's back didn't have to carry the added load of a pregnancy any more.  Things did in fact get better, but not as much as I had hoped.  For one, she could barely pick up our daughter, nor could she stay sitting or standing for any real length of time.  This made breastfeeding anywhere but in bed darn close to impossible.  The end result of that is my wife was unable to "get out" for nearly two months.  We did go to her grandparents house, where she still had her bedroom and could feed our daughter, but traveling to other family was fairly out, as was being out in public for any length of time as she could not breastfeed in a "quiet" manor.

     Two months later my wife's back was slowly getting better.  She could at least pick up our daughter and sit down to breastfeed.  She still had a long way to go.  All told it was well over 30 visits to the chiropractor before my wife was back to where she was before the accident (according to her estimates and the chiropractor's opinion).

     Farmers offer?  Reimbursement for the chiropractor and the one bill we've already received from the hospital.  Mind you we still may be billed for another related visit.  There was no allowance for the fact that we had to put the chiropractor visits on a credit card and owed interest.  There was no allowance for my missing a day of work to get down to the hospital.  There was no allowance for my wife's inability to hold our child for the first two weeks, the problems breastfeeding, the constant pain in her back, going through labor with her back hurt, being essentially forced into taking drugs for pain management during labor, drugs that while approved for the situation are still not good for the baby.  None of this mattered to Farmers.  Whenever we brought it up we were told that it was not tangible and thus could not be eligible for compensation.  When we pressed about it, we were given a new adjustor and had to start all over again.

     Our problems with Farmers did not stop there.  They refused to pay for the repair to our car!  Our insurance (AAA) took the car, repaired it, gave us a rental, waived our deductible, and then had to SUE Farmers for reimbursement.  Here's why I find that completely unbelievable:  The car is a 2002 Camrey.  It was in the shop for about a week (thus one week on a compact rental) and had under $2000 damage to it.  One would think that if a national insurance company is presented with a bill for roughly $3000 (including everything dealing with the car) by another national insurance company (we're not talking some little fly by night company here) for damage to a car that's only one year old, they would pay it.  I can actually understand dicking around the individual people, you may get away with it and save some money, but screwing with another carrier seems stupid. . . very very stupid.

UPDATE 14MAR05:

     Now nearly 2 years after the accident Farmers has offered us our current medical expenses +$1000. This still doesn't sit well with me because we have a possible outstanding medical bill that the hospital has not billed (the ER visit from the accident). Aside from that, the fact that my wife had to go through labor and delivery less than a month after the accident and that she was physically unable to pick up our daughter for the first week or so, and actually resented* having to care for our daughter because of the physical pain involved, makes me think that the settlement is horribly low. I don't know what fair is, but this is not it. As it is, my wife and I decided to accept it anyway, mostly because fighting for something fair would likely eat up so much time and energy as to make it not worth it and because the existing bills were on a credit card that had to get paid. Instead I will continue to operate this site in perpetuity, to hopefully lend a voice to people like my family, who have been wronged by Farmers, and have only this as a recourse.