Far too often, individuals who are hurt in motor vehicle accidents are left with injuries that upend the way they live their lives. Those who are able to recover quickly from their injuries are lucky. Some victims, though, are left with catastrophic injuries that leave them disabled. For these individuals, the future can look bleak. After all, they have to content with the tremendous physical, emotional, and financial damage that is caused to them.
This week, we want to look at medical and rehabilitative costs associated with spinal cord injuries to give you a sense of how important it is to seek legal recourse in an attempt to recover compensation. There is a wide variety of spinal cord injuries, but even the least severe can be extremely costly. For example, those with paraplegia can incur more than $500,000 in medical and rehabilitation expenses in the first year after their accident. Each successive year can cost nearly $70,000. Those with high tetraplegia often experience more than $1 million in first year costs and an additional $180,000 each year thereafter.
As if that is devastating enough, those figures only take into account medically related costs. It doesn’t factor in other economic damages like lost wages, and it doesn’t even touch noneconomic damages like pain and suffering. This means that spinal cord injury sufferers experience a variety of harm that can quickly become overwhelming. This can be especially difficult to deal with, considering that most spinal cord injury victims are merely trying to reclaim their health and some semblance of a normal life in the immediacy after their accident. They often aren’t entirely focused on the other implications of their injuries.
This is completely understandable, and the good news is that help is available. A personal injury attorney who is experienced in handling high value personal injury cases can assist in building a legal claim that seeks to impose liability on negligent parties and recover compensation that addresses the full extent of one’s damages. Therefore, if you or a loved one have suffered a catastrophic injury at the hands of a negligent driver, it might be time to determine your best legal options.
