Catastrophic Injury
What is a Catastrophic Injury?
Injuries occur every single day, and few are considered catastrophic. The difference between a regular injury and a catastrophic injury is the extend of the damage done. With a catastrophic injury, a person suffers from an injury that is life-threatening and/or permanent. There is a significant difference between this type of injury and the type that is minor in comparison.
While even the smallest of injuries can cause you to lose time at work, money, income and other issues that affect your everyday life, it’s catastrophic injuries that do the most damage and change your life forever. More than just medical bills and time lost at work making money, it’s permanent damage that might affect your health forever. It might mean you are unable to work again, that you will continue to incur excessive medical bills for the rest of your life or even that you are no longer able to function properly because of the emotional damage the injury caused your person. In times such as this, a Schimmerling Injury Law Firm attorney is what you need.
The purpose of a personal injury attorney is to gather the facts, the evidence and everything else needed to ensure that you are granted the correct compensation, the correct treatment and medical care as well as the most adequate rehab possible to work through your injuries.
What Causes Catastrophic Injury?
There are many reasons a person might find him or herself in a situation in which catastrophic injury has occurred. One of the most common situations is an accident in a vehicle. A person does not have to be inside of a vehicle to be injured, either. It happens often to pedestrians walking across the street, people walking their animals, those on a bike or even those on a motorcycle. Life can, and does, change in an instant and there is no telling whether or not you could be the victim of an accident like this at any time.
Additionally, many catastrophic injuries are the result of a sports injury. Players fall, they are landed on, they hurt their heads; there are many reasons athletes suffer from catastrophic injuries, and many times they are easily avoidable. Additionally, many people are injured due to the oversight or negligence of another person responsible for ensuring something is safe enough for users or someone simply not paying attention. This can cause you to suffer from catastrophic injury through no fault of your own, and you do have legal rights in these situations.
Different Types of Catastrophic Injury
There are many different types of injuries that can occur in an accident, but only a handful are considered catastrophic due to the nature of the injury and the lasting effect it has on a person’s life. These are not injuries that are simply overcome or gotten over, but injuries that last a lifetime thanks to the permanent damage caused in an accident. What are these different types of catastrophic injury?
Burn Injuries
There are a number of different factors in which a burn might occur. It could be the result of a house or business fire, a fire in a car accident caused by someone else, the explosion of an item with which you are working, the faulty manufacturing of a machine or even radiation and electricity. Chemicals can also cause burns, and there are infinite ways that anyone might come into contact with a burn like any of these at any point in life. Most burns are left to the skin, but many can become much worse. Some burns make their way into the body and cause damage to tissues, muscles and other body parts; each one can cause a person to become forever scarred or even permanently disfigured. On some occasions, it becomes necessary to remove a body part or amputate a limb to care for burns of this nature.
Traumatic Brain Injury
Referred to often as a TBI, this is a dangerous injury. The dangerous fact about an injury such as this is that anything can cause it to occur. From a dangerous car accident in which a victim is lucky to even be alive to a small fender bender in which most people assume everyone is fine as there is little to no damage from the actual accident. Sadly, a traumatic brain injury can occur in the most menial, most minute manner. It can be caused by a small bump to the head, a jolt, a punch, a blow or even something that penetrates the head. Once it happens, it might cause severe trauma to the brain, which then causes it to no longer function properly. This type of brain injury could mean loss of life, it could mean a coma and it could mean that a person’s qualify of life is forever altered. These are often injuries that result in unconsciousness, amnesia, behavioral issues and changes and even complete personality changes. This is one of the most dangerous types of injuries imaginable.
Spinal Cord Injury
The spinal cord is one of the most important parts of the body. It plays a major function in the body’s ability to function. When it is damaged and/or injured, a person’s life will forever change. This particular type of catastrophic injury is one in which you can lose your life, but it’s also one that can forever alter the course of your life. These injuries are often suffered when the cord in injured in a fall, an accident or when something enters the body that is not supposed to. It can happen in an accident, when a bone or tissue or even blood vessels are injured. When the spinal cord is injured, a person could notice the effects from several different bodily functions. Paralysis, partial paralysis and many other issues can occur from this type of injury. Unfortunately, many of these injuries have no cure, and leave a person forever changed.
Loss of Limb
This is not something that many people consider a catastrophic injury in that it doesn’t seem like something that has to have much damage to occur. However, while many people live fully functioning lives without a limb, it’s considered catastrophic for many reasons. Infection, injury, and a number of illnesses can cause a person to lose a limb. These illnesses include, but are not limited to, cancer, diabetes, vascular disease and many others. The pain is often unbearable for those who are suffering from this kind of illness. Additionally, many people lose a limb due to a work-related accident, a car accident and even when they are overseas fighting for the freedom of this country. When this occurs, it’s considered a catastrophic injury. It does forever alter the way a person is able to live and function, and it’s one that requires ample medical treatment, rehabilitation and a long time for recovery.
Neurological Disorder
Almost anything can cause neurological disorder in many instances, and sometimes that is catastrophic injury. These occur when there is damage to the brain that causes a person to become unable to fully function, or a myriad of other issues that might cause a person to have some health issues for the rest of their lives. While sometimes relatively minor, oftentimes these injuries are anything but minor. It could be due to injury or abnormalities caused by injury. These abnormalities might include anything from spinal cord issues to seizures. It might include other issues, too, such as seizures, muscle weakness, a lowered level of muscle coordination and even paralysis. There are many more issues this might include, and they are all dangerous.
Finding Rightful Compensation
At Schimmerling Injury Law Firm, our job is to help you find the compensation to which you are owed following a catastrophic injury. Our accident attorneys have years of experience in legal battles such as these, and they are familiar with the many laws, your rights and the responsibility of the other party. Our goal is to ensure that you have fewer things to worry about in life now that you’ve suffered a catastrophic injury for which you were not planning. Your life did not include plans that would care for you in the instance that something happened through someone else’s negligence, and we want to ensure that you are able to get the help you need to afford your medical bills, rehabilitation and the changes that an injury such as any of these might have on the overall course of your life. Call accident attorney Tom Schimmerling today to speak to an experienced lawyer who can help you find the help that you need.