Brain Injury
Cleveland Brain Injury Lawyer
Traumatic brain injuries are broadly defined as any blow or trauma to the head resulting in a disruption of normal brain functions. Serious closed head injuries can be life-altering, involving a lengthy recovery, possible life-time medical care, and a significant financial burden. If you or someone you love have suffered an acquired brain injury because of the negligence of another, I can help you understand your legal options and win fair compensation for your suffering. As your personal injury lawyer, I will hold the liable party accountable, so no one else becomes their victim. Call me today for a free consultation to discuss your injury claim. As one of the leading Cleveland brain injury attorneys, I’ll find out what happened and I’ll Make Them Pay!
First, it is Important to Understand the Severity of Your Injury, Which Can be Categorized Within One of the Following Levels of Traumatic Brain Injury:
Mild Traumatic Brain Injury
Involves a brief loss of consciousness. The injured person will feel dazed and confused, but brain scans will appear normal. Symptoms
Headache: Persistent head pain, chronic headaches
Dizziness: Feeling unsteady or lightheaded.
Confusion: Mental disorientation, cognitive difficulties
Fatigue: Extreme tiredness.
Memory problems: Difficulty recalling information.
Sensitivity to light and noise: Discomfort when exposed to bright lights or loud sounds.
Moderate Traumatic Brain Injury
Loss of consciousness can last anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, followed by days or weeks of confusion. Experienced brain injury attorneys, like myself, have seen victims exhibit physical and cognitive symptoms for months, years, or even permanently.
Loss of consciousness: A period of unconsciousness, ranging from several minutes to hours, following the injury.
Confusion: Mental disarray, difficulty focusing or understanding surroundings.
Persistent headache: Ongoing head pain that may worsen over time, chronic headaches
Nausea or vomiting: Feeling queasy or throwing up due to disrupted brain function.
Slurred speech: Difficulty articulating words clearly.
Fatigue: Profound tiredness and lack of energy.
Difficulty sleeping: Trouble falling asleep or staying asleep.
Blurred vision: Visual disturbances, unclear or double vision.
Trouble with coordination: Difficulty maintaining balance and coordination.
Mood changes: Emotional fluctuations, irritability, or mood swings.
Memory problems: Challenges in remembering recent events or information.
Sensitivity to stimuli: Increased sensitivity to light, noise, or other sensory inputs.
Severe Traumatic Brain Injury
You may have a penetrating wound (open head injury), loss of motor functions, senses, emotions, and cognitive function. You need financial compensation to afford managing the physical and emotional challenges in your life. Sadly, this level of brain damage is life threatening and permanent.
Prolonged unconsciousness: Unconsciousness lasting for hours or days following the injury.
Profound confusion: Severe mental disarray, inability to comprehend surroundings.
Severe headache: Intense and persistent head pain.
Repeated vomiting or nausea: Frequent episodes of throwing up or feeling queasy.
Convulsions or seizures: Uncontrolled and sudden body movements.
Slurred or incoherent speech: Extreme difficulty articulating words clearly.
Profound fatigue: Overwhelming tiredness and lack of energy.
Loss of coordination: Inability to control bodily movements or maintain balance.
Dilated pupils: Abnormal enlargement of the pupils in the eyes.
Clear fluid drainage from ears or nose: Leaking of clear fluid from the ear or nose.
Numbness or weakness in extremities: Loss of sensation or strength in arms or legs. Nerve damage.
Agitation or restlessness: Extreme unease, fidgeting, or irritability.
Seizures: Uncontrolled and sudden body movements, often recurrent.
Persistent confusion or inability to wake up: Continual disorientation or inability to regain consciousness.
Coma: A prolonged state of unconsciousness with minimal or no responsiveness.
Recovery From a Traumatic Brain Injury Can be Extensive, Involving Many Forms of Rehabilitation, Including:
24/7 Medical Care
After experiencing a traumatic brain injury (TBI), the need for 24/7 care can arise due to the profound impact the injury can have on various aspects of your life as you now know it. Cleveland brain injury lawyers have seen TBI cases result in a range of physical, cognitive, and emotional impairments that may necessitate constant support.
Physical Limitations: Depending on the severity of the TBI, you may face challenges with mobility, coordination, and balance, making it difficult for you to perform daily activities safely and independently.
Cognitive Impairments: TBIs can lead to cognitive deficits such as memory problems, difficulty with attention and concentration, and reduced problem-solving capabilities. These impairments can hinder your ability to manage daily tasks, remember instructions, and make sound decisions.
Communication Difficulties: Severe injuries can affect language skills, making it hard for you to express yourself clearly or understand others. This can lead to frustration, isolation, and difficulties in conveying your needs and desires.
Behavioral and Emotional Changes: Brain injuries can lead to emotional and behavioral changes, including mood swings, irritability, impulsivity, and even depression. These shifts may affect your relationships and ability to cope with stress.
Safety Concerns: Due to a combination of physical and cognitive impairments, you may be at a higher risk for accidents and injuries. Constant supervision is often necessary to prevent falls, mishandling of objects, or engagement in activities that could be harmful.
Medication Management: Many individuals with TBIs require multiple medications to manage pain, seizures, mood disorders, and other related issues. Ensuring the correct medication schedule and dosage is crucial for your recovery and overall health.
Rehabilitation and Therapy: Rehabilitation programs, including physical, occupational, and speech therapy, play a crucial role in recovery. These therapies often require consistent and structured interventions, which can necessitate ongoing assistance.
Complex Medical Needs: In severe cases, TBIs can lead to other medical complications that require specialized care, such as feeding tubes, ventilators, or management of infections.
Suffering a traumatic brain injury can result in changes to your everyday life. Your injury may have been caused by a car accident, fall, or injury on the job. If someone else’s negligence caused your life to be thrown upside down, you need to call me and I’ll Make Them Pay!®
Speech Therapy
After experiencing a traumatic brain injury, speech therapy may be necessary due to the potential impact of the injury on your communication and language skills. Here are some reasons why someone may need speech therapy after suffering a TBI:
Language Impairments: Brain injuries can affect the understanding and proper use of language, leading to difficulties in expressing thoughts, and finding words. Speech therapists can help you regain your language skills by working on vocabulary, sentence structure, and language comprehension.
Articulation and Pronunciation: Some injuries can result in physical changes that affect the muscles used for speech, leading to unclear articulation and pronunciation of sounds. You may need exercises and techniques to improve speech clarity and intelligibility.
Fluency Disorders: A TBI may cause disruptions in the flow of speech, leading to stuttering or other fluency disorders. You may need strategies to manage these disruptions and improve the smoothness of your speech.
Voice Disorders: Vocal cord injuries can affect the quality of a person’s voice, resulting in hoarseness, breathiness, or changes in pitch. Vocal exercises and techniques to restore healthy vocal function. may be necessary.
Cognitive-Communication Challenges: Severe blows to the head can impact cognitive functions such as attention, memory, and problem-solving. This may make it challenging for you to organize your thoughts and engage in coherent conversations. These are devastating consequences.
Social Communication Skills: Communication involves more than just language; it also involves understanding social cues, turn-taking, and maintaining appropriate eye contact. A TBI can disrupt these social communication skills, and speech therapy helps individuals navigate these nuances.
Swallowing and Feeding Issues: It’s possible to experience difficulties with swallowing and managing food safely. Speech therapists, known as speech-language pathologists, also specialize in dysphagia therapy to address these swallowing and feeding challenges.
Physical Therapy
After experiencing a traumatic brain injury (TBI), physical therapy may be needed. With more than 40 years of experience as a personal injury lawyer, I’ve seen the potential impact a head injury can have on your physical mobility and functional abilities. Here are several reasons why you might need physical therapy after suffering a TBI:
Motor Impairments: Injury victims can experience muscle weakness, impaired coordination, and reduced motor control, which can affect their ability to move and perform everyday activities. Physical therapy aims to strengthen muscles, improve coordination, and restore motor skills.
Balance and Gait Difficulties: You may experience challenges with balance and walking due to disruptions in the brain’s control over these functions. You may need exercises and techniques to enhance balance, stability, and walking patterns.
Range of Motion Issues: Some head injuries can result in limited joint mobility and stiffness, making it difficult to move body parts freely. Stretching and range of motion exercises to maintain or regain joint flexibility can help thee issues.
Posture Problems: TBIs can lead to changes in muscle tone and alignment, affecting your posture. There are way to address postural abnormalities to prevent pain and optimize functional posture.
Muscle Spasticity: In some cases, TBIs can cause muscle spasms and involuntary muscle contractions. Physical therapy techniques such as stretching and therapeutic exercises help manage muscle spasticity and promote relaxation.
Adaptive Equipment: Your physical therapist may recommend the use of assistive devices such as canes, walkers, or orthotic braces to enhance mobility and safety. These can very costly, especially if you need them for the rest of your life.
Pain Management: TBI-related injuries can lead to chronic pain, particularly in the neck, shoulders, and back. You may need to learn pain-relief techniques, manual therapy, and exercises to alleviate discomfort.
Rehabilitation of Specific Injuries: Head injuries may result in specific physical pain, such as fractures or soft tissue injuries.
Medical appointments, physical therapy, cognitive therapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy sessions are expensive, and as your recover from your head injury the medical bills will pile up. I’ve been helping TBI victims and their families in Cleveland for more than 40 years. Let me help you! Call me today, and I’ll Make Them Pay!®
Occupational Therapy
Occupational therapy is essential if you who have suffered a traumatic brain injury to regain and enhance your ability to perform daily activities. Here are several reasons why you might need occupational therapy after experiencing a traumatic brain injury.
Activities of Daily Living : Head injuries can impact your ability to independently manage tasks like dressing, grooming, bathing, and feeding. An occupational therapist will work on retraining these skills to promote self-care and independence.
Cognitive Function: If you have suffered a head injury, you may have memory problems, attention issues or impaired problem solving skills. Therapists use strategies to help individuals manage daily routines effectively.
Motor Skills: Fine motor skills can be affected, with hampers daily skills like using utensils, buttoning clothes and manipulating objects.
Adaptive Techniques: You may need to learn new ways of performing tasks due to physical or cognitive limitations caused by the TBI. Therapists teach adaptive techniques and may recommend assistive devices to facilitate independence.
Work and Productivity: If you are returning to work or school, you may need to develop strategies to manage time, organize tasks, and meet responsibilities effectively. Lost wages can be a huge issue after suffering a severe injury.
Sensory Processing: It’s possible to experience changes in your sensory processing, leading to hypersensitivity or hyposensitivity to sensory stimuli. You may need a medical professional to work on your sensory integration techniques.
Driving Rehabilitation: There are occupational therapists who specialize in driving rehabilitation, providing recommendations for adaptive driving equipment or training as needed.
Environmental Modifications: You may need to make necessary modifications that promote safety, accessibility, and independent living in your home.
Neuro-therapy
Neurorehabilitation: This type of therapy focuses on helping the brain recover and adapt after a traumatic brain injury. It involves various techniques aimed at retraining neural pathways and enhancing the brain’s plasticity to regain lost functions or develop compensatory strategies.
Cognitive Rehabilitation: After a serious head injury, cognitive functions such as memory, attention, and problem-solving may be impaired. Neuro-therapy could involve exercises and activities designed to improve these cognitive skills.
Neurofeedback: Neurofeedback is a type of biofeedback that aims to train individuals to self-regulate brain activity. Electroencephalography (EEG) measures brainwave patterns, and individuals learn to modify their brain activity through visual or auditory feedback. This could potentially aid in improving attention, relaxation, and emotional regulation after a serious accident.
Sensory Integration Therapy: TBIs can affect how the brain processes sensory information. Sensory integration therapy aims to improve an individual’s ability to process and respond to sensory stimuli. This may lead to better motor skills, emotional regulation, and overall functioning.
Motor Rehabilitation: Neuro-therapy might include motor retraining programs to help individuals regain physical abilities and coordination lost due to a brain injury. This could involve exercises, repetitive tasks, and adaptive techniques to enhance motor function.
Your Cleveland Brain Injury Lawyer
Victims of traumatic brain injury are often unable to function as they did prior to their injury. Their disabilities prevent them from performing normal every day activities. They may not be able to work, engage with family members, drive, and/or enjoy recreational activities.
Their lives are forever changed, and these changes usually bring significant financial hardships. The lifetime cost for care of a traumatic brain injury can be astronomical. If your life has been forever altered as the result of a traumatic brain injury, you need to call me now at The Law Offices of Tim Misny, I will be the advocate you need to get the compensation you so richly deserve.
As your Cleveland catastrophic injury lawyer, I’ll be there for you, and I’ll Make Them Pay!®
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