Nerve damage can produce an incredibly wide range of symptoms, from mild tingling to full paralysis. While some nerve damage can heal with enough time, other injuries may be permanent.
So how can one diagnosis cause so many different problems?
Nerve damage can be as complex as your nervous system itself. Read on to learn more about these injuries and how you can get compensation for your nerve damage.
What Is Nerve Damage?
Your nervous system is a complex web of nerve fibers that run all over your body transmitting signals between your brain and the rest of your body. These nerves control almost every function in your body, from conscious movements to automatic processes. Nerves also provide you with the five senses that allow you to experience the world around you.
Unfortunately, nerves can get damaged in accidents or as a result of chronic conditions like diabetes. Although some nerve damage can heal over time, more severe injuries may never fully heal. For instance, if you sever the bundle of nerves that makes up your spinal cord, you could wind up paralyzed for life.
What Are the Symptoms of Nerve Damage?
You may experience a wide range of nerve damage symptoms, depending on which nerves were injured.
If your sensory nerves (those that allow you to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel) were damaged, you could experience
- Numbness or tingling, especially in your hands and feet
- Difficulty sensing changes in temperature
- Difficulty feeling pain, or feeling pain under inappropriate conditions, such as when something lightly brushes against you
- Difficulty walking or keeping your balance
If you experience damage to your motor nerves (those that help you control the muscles in your body), you could experience
- Loss of function in the impacted area of the body
- Weakness
- Uncontrolled twitching
- Painful cramps
If your autonomic nerves (those that control the unconscious systems in your body) get damaged, you may experience
- Excessive or inappropriate sweating
- Inability to tolerate heat
- Gastrointestinal problems
- Rapid blood pressure changes
If you experience any of these symptoms after an accident, it’s important to get examined by a doctor as soon as possible.
How Does It Happen?
So how do these nerves get damaged in the first place? Often, nerve damage happens as the result of another injury in an accident. For instance, if you break your back in an accident, the broken vertebrae can sever the nerves of your spinal cord and cause paralysis.
In some cases, nerves can get compressed or otherwise damaged as a result of swelling caused by a soft tissue injury. Some accidents can also shove foreign objects into your body, causing a penetrating injury that can compress or sever nerves. And some nerves can get damaged with sheer wear and tear, especially if you work in a job that involves a lot of repetitive movements.
When Does Nerve Damage Happen?
There are several situations that commonly lead to nerve damage. As you might imagine, car accidents are a common cause of nerve damage. The sheer forces involved in a car crash, combined with the potential for penetrating injuries, can cause serious damage to your nervous system.
Many people experience nerve damage as a result of working at a job with a lot of repetitive motion. Manufacturing industry employees tend to be at especially high risk for this type of nerve damage.
And almost any accident that results in a broken bone can place you at risk of nerve damage. This can include slip and fall accidents, bicycle accidents, pedestrian accidents, and more.
What Compensation Can You Get?
If you experience nerve damage in an accident, you could be entitled to compensation. There are three basic types of damages you can recover.
- Economic damages – This type of compensation repays you for any financial loss resulting from an accident. This may include medical bills, lost wages, loss of future earning potential, and so on.
- Non-economic damages – This type of damages compensates you for suffering that doesn’t have an inherent dollar value. You can get non-economic damages for pain and suffering, scarring and disfigurement, mental trauma, emotional anguish, and more.
- Punitive damages – These damages punish a defendant for acting in a heinous manner during an accident. They are very rare to recover in personal injury cases due to the high burden of proof they carry.
A personal injury lawyer can help you calculate every type of damages you’re owed and fight for a full and fair settlement offer.
Discuss Your Injury with an Experienced Personal Injury Lawyer
Nerve damage can take a serious toll on your life, impacting everything from your ability to walk to how your body regulates its temperature. If you’ve suffered nerve damage in an accident, you could be entitled to compensation.
The lawyers at Lopez Accident Injury Attorneys have been fighting for the citizens of St. Petersburg for more than twenty-five years. We’ve recovered millions of dollars for our clients, and we’re ready to go to bat for you, too. Schedule a free consultation with our St. Petersburg personal injury lawyers by calling (727) 933-0015 today to discuss your case.
