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.
Because of the financial burden of a catastrophic injury, it is nearly always required that the injured have an experienced injury attorney to investigate the claim. These attorneys work with several other specialists and with rehabilitation medication.
A catastrophic injury attorney has one goal and one goal only; that is to secure the best possible future for the client.
Paralysis is a major type of catastrophic injury.
Definition: “Total loss of strength to the affected muscle area or limb.”
For a muscle to function normally, it is required that no nerves are broken that would inhibit the brain from moving that particular muscle group. The more broken nerves there are, the more pain one will feel. Total loss of movement is considered paralysis.
Initial slight weak can sometimes lead to paralysis. And, sometimes totally paralyzed limbs can regain complete strength.
It is possible for a single muscle to become paralyzed but it is much more common for an entire body region to become paralyzed.
Quadriplegia occurs once the arms, legs, and chest have all become paralyzed.
Paraplegia: where both legs, and sometimes part of the chest, are paralyzed;
Hemiplegia is the paralysis of only half the body. Right or Left.
Spinal cord or brain damage and the leading cause of most paralysis cases.
Brain damage can be caused by a number of things. Such causes could be a stroke or a disease or a tumor. Spinal cord damage is a little different and is usually caused by some sort or trauma like a car accident. Damage to the lower portion of the spinal cord can lead to paraplegia while damage to the upper portion can eventually lead to quadriplegia.
Not all paralysis is treatable. But for non-permanent paralysis, the only way to treat paralysis is to repair its underlying cause. Rehabilitation may include: physical therapy to rebuild the muscles; occupational therapy to help restore the ability to perform daily activities, such as bathing, getting dressed; respiratory therapy to help breathing; vocational rehabilitation to retrain for a job; social worker to help adjust to one’s condition; speech-language pathologist; nutritionist and others.
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.
Medicare or medicaid comes into play when the paralyzed person is unable to earn a living due to the injury. This often goes hand in hand with Worker’s Comp if the injury was job related, in which case, the injured with not have to find their own injury attorney, but can find one through insurance which will then subrogate for the client and sue the responsible party.