A car accident can wreak havoc in an instant. Resultant nerve damage can last a lifetime. It’s not easy at first to know whether you are suffering from nerve damage. It’s usually the whiplash and broken bones that are the most evident injuries. Nerve damage from a car accident is a silent, serious injury.
it is imperative that you act swiftly and contact a professional car accident lawyer to help you fight for compensation if you suspect that you or a loved one might have suffered nerve damage caused by a car accident.
Understanding The Nerves in Our Body
Quite simply, our nerves send electrical impulses throughout our body, allowing it to function properly. When they get damaged, the functions the nerves control no longer work. Nerve damage from a car accident can happen quickly, or it can deteriorate over time. Nerve damage commonly occurs in the spinal cord, the brain, and anywhere on the surface of our body.
There are three types of nerves in our body. These are:
- Motor Nerves – Motor nerves facilitate our human movement, by sending messages from our brain and spinal cord to the muscles in our body. If, after a car accident, you can no longer pick up an object, or have trouble sitting or standing or telling your body what to do, the chances are that you have motor nerve damage. At first, this can just appear to be cramps, spasms, or even muscle weakness – so it’s important that you get the right medical assessment so as not to underestimate the potential long-term damage.
- Sensory Nerves – Sensory nerves send messages from muscles to the spinal cord and brain, and so work in the other direction. Sensory nerves tell our brain that our body is still in motion. When they have been damaged we may feel a slight tingling sensation or numbness. Chronic pain or sensitivity to touch are common symptoms of sensory nerve damage.
- Autonomic Nerves – Autonomic nerves control the involuntary (or partly voluntary) bodily functions. Things like your heart rate, digestion, and blood pressure are all controlled by the autonomic nervous system. When a nerve is compressed, pinched, or even spliced, it can impact your quality of life in ways that you can’t immediately put a finger on in the aftermath of a tragic car accident. Damage to the autonomic nerves can result in a variety of conditions that only become evident over time.
Common Causes of Nerve Damage After Car Accidents
The force of impact from a car accident causes whiplash, the most common type of injury that people think of with regards to car accidents. A pinched nerve around one’s neck and the head is not only incredibly painful, but it can also severely hamper bodily function.
The violent action of braking suddenly or crashing into something in a car accident can also cause lacerations, resulting in lasting nerve damage. Most commonly, people experience pain in their neck, lower and middle back, hands, and feet.
Blunt force trauma – where no laceration is clearly evident – does the job of disguising the actual nerve damage. Here you might have compressed or stretched a nerve and it will go unnoticed as just a dull pain because a cracked rib or bruised leg is more obvious to the eye and steals the attention. Just because the nerve damage isn’t immediately visible doesn’t mean you should brush it off as a bit of bodily discomfort.
What Type of Compensation Is Possible After Nerve Damage?
If you have been the victim of a car accident, you may be eligible for compensation. This falls into two categories: economic and non-economic damages.
Ask yourself: “how much financial loss did the nerve damage cause?” Tally up all your medical expenses, rehabilitation treatment, prescription medication, home care bills, and related car accident expenses. Then factor in the loss of earnings for time spent unable to work. Nerve damage injuries are almost always long-term, so a higher settlement payout is negotiated to help you get back on your feet.
The non-economic damages are for more catastrophic injuries where paralysis occurs (for example) and your quality of life is severely compromised. If you can’t play with your kids or become dependent on pain medication to get through each day, or if you can no longer be physically intimate with your spouse… these are all strong reasons to claim for non-economic damages.
Of course, liability needs to be established, and this is when having the right car accident lawyer really helps. Once we understand the specific details of your accident, we will be better placed to advise on how much compensation you are likely to receive.
Insurance companies will aggressively fight against personal injury claims involving nerve damage because they know how costly they can be. This shouldn’t be a reason to dissuade you if you have suffered a serious injury. If another person’s reckless, careless, or negligent actions are to blame, you need to consult with an attorney – and then consider your options.
Proper Medical Diagnosis After an Accident
A neuropathy diagnosis from a doctor holds the key to receiving compensation for nerve damage in the aftermath of an accident. A neuropathy expert will help you to assess the numbness and/or pain you are feeling in your body. They can detect any weakness in your body and attribute it to the relevant nerve damage.
This is when having an experienced car accident attorney that can assist you in finding the proper medical expert to perform the right medical tests is crucial.
Localized tests including electromyography, nerve biopsy, skin biopsy, and conduction studies that need to be conducted on areas of your body where the nerve damage occurred. The right doctor will then provide a neuropathy diagnosis which will help with understanding the treatment plan for repairing the nerve damage, as well as understanding what the roadmap for your recovery looks like.
Once that has been ascertained, you’ll be in a better position to calculate how much compensation you are eligible for in your personal injury claim.
Why Should You Hire an Injury Lawyer After an Accident?
Insurance companies have multiple techniques to frustrate you into accepting their low-ball offer in the aftermath of your car accident. They will use all the tricks in the book to try to get you to settle for a lower amount than your claim is worth.
An experienced auto accident attorney will fight for your rights and try to maximize your compensation – allowing you the time and effort that is required to recover.
Call our law offices today at any of our convenient locations and get a free consultation.
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