For an injury to be considered catastrophic, it must occur without any warning. It must also disrupt your life is some way, whether by inhibiting you from working a full-time job or by keeping your from experiencing your life in the way you had previous to the injury. It takes a lot to manage this kind of injury. It often takes several health care professionals and experts to tend to the injured as they go from the hospital to rehab and back into their community and home.
The financial burden that falls on the injured nearly always requires that they find a good injury attorney to make their life a bit easier. These attorneys work closely with professionals in the health care industry as well as rehabilitation medications.
The only goal of a truly good catastrophic injury attorney is to restore the client back to the previous state–to indemnify them.
Paralysis: Catastrophic Injury One.
Definition: “Total loss of strength to the affected muscle area or limb.”
For an unharmed muscle to function correctly, it requires no broken nerve connection from the brain to any area of the muscle group. Any damage that reduces the brain’s ability to move that muscle group will cause muscle weakness. Complete loss of movement results in paralysis.
Weakness may sometimes lead to paralysis. Other times, strength may be restored to a paralyzed limb.
While paralysis may affect an individual muscle, it usually affects an entire body region. Some types of paralysis are:
Quadriplegia is where the legs, arms, and the chest become paralyzed.
Paraplegia: where both legs, and sometimes part of the chest, are paralyzed;
Hemiplegia: where one side of the body is paralyzed.
Spinal cord or brain damage and the leading cause of most paralysis cases.
Damage to the brain may come from a stroke, tumor, certain diseases and a fall or blow to the head. – Damage to the spinal cord is most often caused by trauma, such as a fall or car accident. There may be other causes, such as a herniated disc or various diseases or conditions. The type of paralysis may give important clues to its origin. Paraplegia, or paralysis of the legs, occurs after damage to the lower spinal cord, and quadriplegia occurs after injury to the upper spinal cord, at the shoulders or higher. Spinal cord damage too high on the neck will affect the nerves serving the lungs and heart paralyzing the muscles that circulate blood and cause breathing, resulting in death.
Some paralysis is treatable but not all. The only way known to treat paralysis is repairing the underlying nerves. This is done through the rehabilitation process which includes, physical therapy for rebuilding muscles, occupational therapy to help develop the skills again to perform everyday tasks such as bathing or getting clothed. Also included is respiratory therapy to help with breathing.
Consequences legally: Lawsuits from a paralysis injury require an injury attorney that may consult many specialists and experts and doctors to understand what the cause of paralysis is. Again their job is to indemnify, or make whole, the client.
Where the paralysis affects the injured person’s ability to earn a living, there may also be coordination with Medicare, Medicaid, private health and disability insurance, and other alternative sources of income or payment for medical care.
by Brown Cote
About the Author:
Visit SBFC Law at the following link: SBFC Law Group and also check out Caton Hanson, owner of SBFC Law, at SBFC Law Group Utah.
