Our spinal cord carries messages from the brain to the rest of the body. Any disruption of these messages will also disrupt the way our body functions. For this reason, an injury involving the spine can be devastating, particularly where the diagnosis involves a severe spinal cord injury (SCI).
A dedicated Elk Grove and Sacramento County spinal cord injury lawyer at the O'Brien & Zehnder Law Firm can get you the compensation you deserve during this difficult time.
From the moment that a serious SCI occurs, the victim's life is greatly changed. Despite research on spinal cord repair and advances in assistive devices to replace lost function, the effects of SCI remain stubbornly permanent.
Victims of severe SCI can often have shortened life expectancies and a lower quality of life. If you or a loved one has suffered a severe SCI, you already know how important it is to obtain professional help with rehabilitation, assistive devices, and counseling. Perhaps you have also witnessed how quickly lost income or medical expenses can bring a family to the brink of poverty. If the SCI is the result of someone's negligence, an experienced personal injury lawyer should be part of the recovery process.
The most common cause of SCIs since 2010, as presented by National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center, is motor vehicle accidents, accounting for more than a third of SCIs. The next most common causes registered in that period are:
Many of the injuries are work-related falls and car accidents; the typical victim is young, male, and Caucasian, but people of all ages, genders, and races suffer these injuries. In any event, you may need a spinal cord injury attorney on your side.
The primary distinctions in SCI involve the severity of damage to the cord, the effect of the injury on the victim's limbs, and the level of the spine at which the injury occurs.
Severity is classified as either complete or incomplete. The complete injury destroys all function below the level of the injury while an incomplete SCI leaves some function below that level because some fibers of the cord are still functional.
The effect on limb function is described as either:
The level of injury is simply the level of the spinal column, with C designating the cervical region (neck & upper back), T representing the thoracic region (mid-back), L the lumbar region (lower back), and S the sacrum region (tailbone). Each region is represented by numbers (C1 through C8, T1 through T12, L1 through L5, and S1 through S5).
Essentially, the spinal cord and the spinal nerves, that branch off it, provide the body with motion, sensation, and a spectrum of autonomic functions like respiration, heart contractions, and other actions that occur without conscious effort. Accordingly, SCIs may cause:
The consequences may include loss of bladder and bowel control and altered or lost sexual function.
Apart from the direct physical effects just described, SCI victims tend to experience a variety of indirect consequences that diminish their lives. Some of the most important and detrimental are:
In facing the lasting effects of a severe SCI, receiving fair damages is crucial. Consider that the estimated lifetime cost of dealing with a severe cervical spine injury suffered at the age of 25 is over $3 million for injuries at C5-C8 and an astounding $4.6 million for injuries in the C1-C4 range.
The costs of the injury build up rapidly and your effort to obtain compensation should be just as rapid.
Sacramento County attorneys John M. O'Brien & Grant Zehnder are part of a highly rated personal injury law firm. We know how SCI victims and their families feel and the uphill battles they face. Call us today to start the recovery process.
