How Much Can I Get for a Spinal Cord Injury? 

By  //  October 1, 2022

Injuries of any kind are hard to deal with, spinal cord injuries, however, are exceptionally life-changing. A spinal cord injury can paralyze you, change the way you live your life, and make it nearly impossible to complete normal tasks that you could once do with ease. A spine injury caused by negligence is one that you can get a monetary settlement for that might make life a little easier. 

What Does the Spinal Cord Do?

The spinal cord is one of the most important parts of the body. It relays messages from the brain to the parts of the body and helps you to move, both fine motor movements and larger movements like walking or using your arms. The spinal cord is housed in the spinal column and runs parallel to the spine. This cord is a bundle of nerves that is essential to our every day lives and to our ability to move.

The spinal cord is needed for any and all function of the body and for movement. When the spinal cord is injured, it can make it difficult to walk, to use your arms, to use your legs, and you can even be fully paralyzed and unable to walk at all when the injury is severe enough. Spinal cord injuries can occur at any time of life, even when a child is being born, and they are very serious and can affect the life of the individual forever. They do not always heal, and may be permanent.

What is a Spinal Cord Injury?

It is helpful to first understand what a spinal cord injury is. A spinal cord injury is any injury that affects the function or structure that is the spinal cord. This can be anything from a twist or a fracture, all the way to the spinal cord being severed.

Now, this type of injury generally comes in varying severity. There are four separate parts of the spinal cord and injury to each section helps to determine how severe the injury is and how impacted the life of the individual dealing with the injury is likely to be.

There are two general types of spinal cord injury, a complete spinal cord injury where the damage is permanent and often leads to some level of being paralyzed. This could be paraplegia or tetraplegia. This type of injury leads to a permanent change in the life of the person that has undergone the injury and is now having to learn how to live life with the injury.

There is also an incomplete spinal cord injury. An incomplete spinal cord injury is one that does not cause the patient to become paralyzed. This can change the ability of the person to feel, but this type of injury may be able to heal and the person may not be left with as much damage.

Levels of Spinal Cord Injuries

There are a few different levels of spinal cord injury as well that do determine what sort of movement is going to be affected. The first is a cervical spinal cord injury. These are injuries to the cervical spinal cord or the portion of the spinal cord that is housed in the neck. This is the most severe level of spinal cord injury that can easily lead to death or quadriplegia or fully body paralysis. This type of injury, even if it is not a complete spinal cord injury, is going to change the life of the person affected forever.

The next level of spinal cord injury is a thoracic spinal cord injury. This type of injury occurs in the thoracic spinal cord that affects the arms, the upper and mid chest and the abdominal muscles. This is the type of injury that often leads to a loss in function of the hands and the arms. It can also affect the ability to breathe well and to get a full breath.

Moving down the spine, the next level of injury is the lumbar spinal cord injury. This affects the lumbar spinal cord that is in the lower back and often affects the ability of the individual to walk. It may lead to the need for a wheel chair or braces and it can severely limit the mobility of the person that has been affected.

The last level of spinal cord injury is the sacral spinal cord injury. This affects the sacral spinal cord that is located in the pelvis. This is the type of injury that affects the pelvic muscles and the pelvic organs. It may cause incontinence, but someone with this type of injury is still likely to be able to walk.

No matter what type of spinal cord injury you have, this is a very serious issue to deal with and it can greatly change the quality of your life and how you deal with things. It is so important that if you believe that you have a spinal cord injury, that you take the time to see doctor immediately to get it diagnosed and to begin treatment.

What Causes Spinal Cord Injuries?

There are literally millions of things that can cause a spinal cord injury and make it difficult for you to function. From a car accident, a recreational vehicle accident, a fall, being stabbed, and more, there are tons of different ways that the spinal cord can become injured. Your spinal cord, though strong, is something that can become damaged beyond repair in a matter of seconds. Certain spinal cord injuries can lead to instant death of the person that was injured. It is so important to protect your spinal cord at all costs.

The most common reason for spinal cord injuries is negligence. Either on the part of the person that was injured and something that they were doing, or due to the negligence of another person that did not prevent the risky behavior that caused the injury. Negligence can be applied to things like car accidents, medical malpractice, and more.

How to Prove Negligence

For those that have been injured due to negligence it is important to be able to prove that there was some sort of negligence that caused the injury. To prove negligence you have to be able to present four different things. First, you have to be able to prove that the person being sued for negligence had a duty of care to the person that was injured. Let’s use a car accident as an example. The person driving had a duty of care to ensure that when the injured individual got into the car that they got to where they were going without injury.

The next thing to prove is that there was a breach of duty. This means that they were supposed to keep you safe when you were in their car, but they did not. Either by driving recklessly, or by not paying attention to the road so that they then caused the accident. The next thing that your attorney is going to have to prove is that your injuries are a result of the breach of duty of care. This means they will need to prove that you were injured due to the accident and that you did not get injured in some other way and are trying to say that the accident caused it when it did not.

The last thing that needs to be proven are the damages, or the amount of compensation that you need to be able to keep on living your life and to get back to a good way of living. This is going to be the settlement amount that you are awarded for your spinal cord injury.

How are Damages Assessed?

So, the next thing that has to do with a spinal cord injury is to determine how much money is going to be awarded to the person that was injured. The court is going to take a few things into account when determining this amount. First, they are going to look at the severity of the injury. Is it a cervical injury, thoracic, lumbar or a sacral injury?

The location of the injury is going to affect how serious it is and how much your life is going to be changed by it. This is the main deciding factor that helps the court to determine what the overall settlement is going to be. With a spinal cord injury, it is a bit easier to determine how serious an injury is due to the fact that there are clearly defined categories that the court can then refer back to.

The next thing that is going to be taken into account is the medical bills that you had to pay to get treated. This means that the court is likely to help you pay your medical bills by awarding you enough money to cover the bills that you had to initially treat the injury and the emergency services as well as some money to help with continuing medical care and upkeep as well. This can cover things like nursing homes if you have to move to one, round the clock care, physical therapy and more.

The last thing that the court is going to take into account is how your life has changed and the pain and suffering that you have endured both mentally and physically from the injury. The amount of money you can get is going to be different from case to case, there is really no way to clearly define how much any one person is going to get from a spinal cord injury case, it truly does depend on the injury and on the court as they see fit.

The money from a spinal cord injury case can be used in any way that you need to help make your life easier and help you deal with the injury that you have sustained. Unless the money is earmarked for one specific thing, like paying off your medical bills, you can use it for anything that you need to in order to make your new life more bearable. You can use the money to pay for your bills, you can use it to help sustain your home, you can use it to get round the clock care and nursing care and more.

The amount that you get is going to be completely based on the severity of your injury so making sure you are collecting the reports that state how bad your injury is, that state what caused it, and that also illustrate just how dramatically your life has changed is going to help you get the most comprehensive settlement possible. Dealing with a spinal cord injury that has totally changed your life is a struggle, but a settlement may make it easier for you to get the medical and special care you need to be able to live a full life despite your injury.

Why Do You need a Lawyer?

For those dealing with a spinal cord injury, attaining a lawyer early on is really a great way to make sure you have all the things you need for a solid case and can also help you to feel a bit more secure in your position. A lawyer is going to be able to help you collect the information and the records that are going to be needed to help make the case, to prove duty of care and breach of duty, and also to prove that the injury was the result of the negligence of another person.

In some cases the court will settle without going to a full-blown trial, this is to your benefit as it is going to keep you from having to go to court and keep you from having to prove that the injury you are dealing with was part of the accident. Spinal cord injuries can change the way you live no matter how severe they are or how minimal.

A lawyer is going to be on your side and is also going to be able to serve as a proxy between you and the court so that you can be certain you are getting a fair shake. Spinal cord injuries can completely change your life, in some cases, they can entirely ruin lives. While dealing with a spinal cord injury is hard, it does not have to be impossible in terms of getting a fair settlement that can be used to help better the life you are now living and the injury that you are going to have to learn to live with.

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