After a catastrophic limb injury, your priorities should be medical first—but the way you handle the “paperwork window” early can affect your outcome.
If you can, do these things quickly:
- Get copies of key records: ER intake notes, discharge summaries, surgical reports, and any imaging reports.
- Request the incident documentation: if law enforcement responded to a crash, ask how to obtain the report number and related documentation.
- Preserve scene evidence: if it was a roadway/vehicle incident, don’t assume surveillance will remain available—ask what footage may exist and how to identify it.
- Keep a running timeline: where you were, what happened, who was present, when symptoms changed, and when you first learned amputation was necessary.
Even if you feel overwhelmed, these steps help prevent common problems we see in limb loss claims—missing records, vague timelines, and gaps insurance uses to argue the injury is unrelated or unrelated to the incident.


