Brain injury can happen to you or anyone at any time. In Texas alone, 479,000 people live with limitations and disabilities that brain injury brings. This medical condition impairs your physical ability to learn and move, causes you to behave erratically, and makes you feel misunderstood and withdrawn from the world.
If you sustain a brain injury, whether mild, moderate, or severe, a personal injury lawyer helps you move around with your case.
Read on to learn more about how a brain injury affects certain aspects of your life and the role of a personal injury lawyer in getting substantial compensation for your injury.
Symptoms of Brain Injury
Brain injury results from a sharp blow on the head or an object penetrating the skull. It can also cause damage to tissues and blood vessels in the brain, which might lead to more severe complications and eventual death. The symptoms of a brain injury appear a few days or weeks after the accident.
If any accident caused a strong impact on your head, look out for the following symptoms that manifest in more than one part of your body:
Mild Brain Injury
Watch out for these physical brain injury symptoms:
- Headache
- Loss of balance
- Speech problems
- Fatigue
- Drowsiness
A sudden change of behavior is common for those who have brain injury symptoms, including:
- Losing consciousness for several seconds or minutes
- Mood swings and feelings of depression
- Problems with concentration and memory
- Little or excessive sleeping hours
- Constant state of confusion and disorientation
Brain injury affects your senses in more ways than one. You might find yourself suffering the following sensory symptoms:
- Blurry vision.
- Becoming sensitive to light and sound.
- Constant ringing in the ears.
- Decreased ability to smell.
Moderate to Severe Brain Injury
The symptoms of moderate to severe brain injury appear hours or days after the accident. Watch out for these physical, cognitive, and sensory symptoms:
- Headache that keeps on worsening
- Constant vomiting
- Loss of consciousness for minutes or hours
- Seizures
- Dilated pupils
- Numbness and weakness of limbs, especially on the fingers and toes
- Unable to wake up
- Clear fluid running down from the nose and ears
- Impaired coordination
- Agitated and confused behavior
- Comatose
Brain Injury Symptoms in Children
Children can suffer from brain injury as well. Here are some symptoms you need to look out for:
- Getting irritated easily
- Changes in eating and sleeping patterns
- Inability to pay attention to something for a matter of time
- Seizures, depression, and drowsiness
- Losing interest in playing and hobbies
- Constant crying to the point of being inconsolable
Consult a doctor if any of these symptoms persist following a blow on the head. Do not wait for these symptoms to lead to serious complications later on.
Consequences of a Brain Injury
A single brain injury can change your life for the worse forever. It is not something to be taken lightly since the changes and consequences will affect you and the people around you. Brain injury has several implications for many aspects of a person’s life.
Personality
After an accident leading to a brain injury, your personality is buried deep in your mind. However, you’ll start to experience social anxiety, depression, anger, and a sense of being overwhelmed and helpless simultaneously. These moods can drag on for months following the accident.
Your various mood swings can be mistaken as changes in your personality. These emotional symptoms weigh you down when the accident is still fresh in your memory.
Daily life
Your daily life and routine bear the brunt of the aftermath of a brain injury. Depending on the severity of the injury, you will experience headaches, dizziness, blurry vision, decreased ability to taste and smell, and loss of balance and coordination. These physical consequences limit your ability to carry out routines and plans that you used to do.
You will also feel less independent since someone always has to assist you in your every move. You are more prone to other diseases and complications with the loss of stamina.
Your speech, bowel movement, and bladder functions will also go haywire and make you even sicker following a brain injury.
Sexuality
A brain injury can severely affect how you express your sexuality. It causes reduced sex drive, erectile problems in men, and impulsive sexual behaviors in the most inappropriate times. Brain injury minimizes the frequency of having sex with your partner and makes you unable to attain orgasm.
Inappropriate sexual behaviors can get you in trouble with people later on without knowing that you suffered from a brain injury.
Relationships
Brain injury affects your relationships with the people around you. People will end up pitying you due to your condition. It can also cause you to withdraw and isolate yourself from anyone you know.
When you suffer from a brain injury of any severity, you will feel confused, sad, and depressed about why people change how they treat you after the accident. You may think your loved ones do not understand how you feel, thus, making it difficult for you to seek emotional support. They also feel helpless and frustrated with your situation and are running out of ideas to help you.
Whether it is a filial, romantic, or platonic relationship, the dynamics are bound to change in one way or another following a brain injury.
Work
Brain injury disrupts your normal working cycle. You will find yourself needing help to filter out noises and distractions. Since brain injury also affects your cognitive skills, relearning and sharpening your communication skills, learning, memory, and problem-solving tactics might take time.
You cannot focus and handle even one thing at a time. This could affect your work performance and could cost you your job.
Treatment and Prevention of Brain Injury
Brain injury is both preventable and unpreventable. It becomes unpreventable when situations are out of your control, such as explosions and assaults from another person. Treatments are required after suffering from a brain injury, no matter how severe it gets.
Here is everything you may need to know about the treatment and prevention of brain injury:
Treatment
Mild brain injury does not need a lot of treatments. Rest, cold compress, and over-the-counter medicines for headaches are enough to relieve the pain. However, you must closely monitor your symptoms to ensure you are not heading toward untimely death.
When symptoms persist, consult a doctor immediately.
For moderate to severe brain injuries, you need emergency care to ensure enough oxygen in your body and stabilize your blood pressure.
Surgery is often required, and the patient goes to the intensive care unit for further monitoring. After the surgery, the patient needs occupational and speech therapy and medicines to recover fully. Anti-seizure drugs prevent seizures that could lead to death. Diuretics are also given to increase the excreted urine and reduce pressure on the brain. Follow-up checkups are required to monitor the patient.
Prevention
A brain injury may be caused by falls, domestic violence, assault, sports injuries, vehicular collisions, combat injuries, and explosions. Sometimes, you still get injured in the brain, no matter how cautious you are.
However, keeping these tips in mind will do you more good than harm:
1. Being aware of your surroundings. Nothing beats a sharp mind when walking down the road and looking out for bumps and other stumbling blocks that could kill your balance. Always walk on a bare patch of the road and be careful with every step. Keep your eyes alert when going up and down the stairs and ladders.
2. Keeping your reflexes sharp. When someone tries to hit you, use your arms as a shield to dodge the coming charge from another person. A sharp reflex will save you from expensive medical bills later on, just in case your brain gets injured.
3. Using high-quality gear. For riders, drivers, athletes, and people always in combat, wearing high-quality gear from head to toe reduces brain injury risk. Invest your money in safety gear if your work or hobby falls under driving, sports, and combat.
4. Staying away from places that might explode. As much as possible, keep yourself away from areas with a high chance of exploding. Explosions can affect not just your brain but your ears.
5. Knowing your worth. If your partner constantly hits you, muster enough courage to pack your bags and leave. No relationship is worth staying if you get hit every day, especially in the head. It will only lead to brain injury and might eventually kill you.
Find a Personal Brain Injury Lawyer
Sustaining a brain injury from any accident is not an easy predicament. Every aspect of your life will change drastically because full recovery takes a long time.
To take control of your situation, find the best personal injury lawyer in Houston, Texas, for proper legal representation.