Francesca G. – Dog Bite Victim
Franchesca was very outgoing, extremely creative. She would put together all kinds of clothes and stuff and I’d let her put makeup on me and stuff like that when she was small. She would never stop talking, just always babbling about something, jumping off of stuff. She was a good, hyper, little, happy baby. She was like my little twin. She was just the cutest, most beautiful baby.
We normally go to my grandma’s house a lot and we were always over there. My aunt’s house, which is like right down the block, I just remember playing around and eventually I looked over and I saw the dog sleeping and as a little kid, you know you don’t really think things through. I kind of just was like I want to feed the dog. I opened her mouth and I started putting food in her mouth and she woke up very startled and she just latched onto the side of my face. All of a sudden I just heard like a scream and a bark and I turned around and she was just staring at me and then there was blood coming down her face. I ran out the house and I started running to the hospital which was down the block from my house. My grandfather doesn’t speak English so he’s frantic yelling at me in Spanish, “The babyies! The babies! The babies!” and he’s telling me to go to the hospital. So me and my mom flew over there. I felt my heart drop and to my stomach. It’s like your worst nightmare is coming true.
Basically it was 180 stitches in and 180 stitches out the there was almost a hole through her face and then they had some here that they had to close up too. Just to see her looking at me telling me, “Daddy it hurts”, you know it’s tough. It’s my baby girl’s face. It was hard. Horrible. My medical insurance company said we’re not going to cover this anymore because it was an accident and I’m like I can’t pay this what am I, you know, what am I going to do? My kid was injured. I have all these medical bills coming in. I’ve got to sue my own parents. We’ve got to put our family dog to sleep. It was a horrible situation all the way around. My concern was her most of all and not only physically, emotionally, how she would act.
I was very embarrassed of it for a long time. People in school would look and be like what’s wrong with your face and then it makes me feel like there was something wrong with my face and I think that was probably the hardest part. We just reassured her always her mom her especially her dad you know that she’s beautiful that was really the only way we could get through or she got through it you know. I’m 23 years old I have this beautiful girl that’s got her face bitten off and I didn’t know what to do. A friend told a friend is a really good attorney and so we went to him and he helped.
Well we are visiting a client that I have not seen in over 20 years we got an amazing result and she was just glowing with the the effect that this has had on her life and how it changed her whole life. I ran into your spectacular wonderful daughter. How are you? Hello Erin! How are you? Thanks for remembering me. Thank you! God bless you! Everything going good, yeah? It made me so happy to know I did good and this kid…oh my God…what a treasure!
Yeah, everything you did worked out really. It really did. He helped set up me and my son, so…
Oh that’s so nice! Even better! Exactly, and that money is going to go and help him go through college too and set up his career so it’s amazing. That’s terrific. I think that the way my mom and Dan agreed to set up my structure settlement was probably the smartest thing that they could have done. We had plotted this course where it would slowly drip to her at like pivotal moments in her life. She was able to buy her own car. She was able to put herself through college and, you know, have financial freedom at a young age.
I still have a few more settlements that are coming within the next few years up until I’m 30 and I want to save as much as I can of it so that I could put my son through college and help him do what he wants to do. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, you know. There is help. There are people out there that have knowledge of how to manage the situation and Dan did that for us very clear in his explanation of the procedure. He did a great job. Can’t say enough about it. It really set me up for my future and I was glad that I actually got the chance to really thank him for that and tell him how much it really meant for me and for my family.
