How a Lawyer Can Help You Pay for Standard TBI Treatments

Dealing with a traumatic brain injury often brings many challenges since the symptoms can affect how you function in every area of your daily life. Treatment can prove difficult, and you may have a long road to recovery ahead.

What does traumatic brain injury treatment actually look like? By breaking down the treatments you have received or may receive in the future, you can further evaluate the compensation you might expect from the party that caused your accident. This can make it easier for you to move forward with a brain injury claim and feel confident about any settlement offer issued by the insurance company.

Emergency Care

If you show symptoms of traumatic brain injury at the scene of the accident, especially if you lose consciousness for even a short time, you may need emergency medical care.

Ambulance Transport

Emergency medical care often starts with ambulance transport away from the accident scene. First responders may want to avoid any further trauma to your head and neck until you can receive a full evaluation in the emergency room.

If you have only minor traumatic brain injury, the emergency room may recommend that you go home and rest. On the other hand, if you have more serious symptoms, you may have a long hospital stay.

Testing

In some cases, you may have to go through substantial testing to uncover the full extent of your injuries and what treatments you may need to address those injuries. You may have a CT scan, which would show any evidence of fractures, bleeding in the brain, blood clots, or bruised tissue.

An MRI, on the other hand, can offer a more detailed view of the brain. Most often, the emergency room uses CT scans. You may, however, have an MRI if your injury does not appear to stabilize or if your doctor suspects further injury.

Decreasing Bleeding

Slowing and decreasing bleeding can prove critical after a serious head injury. You may need a transfusion to replace the blood you lost. In some cases, you may need emergency surgery to alleviate pressure on your brain caused by bleeding, since additional pressure could lead to further bruising and increasing injuries.

Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

In many cases, mild traumatic brain injury, or a minor concussion, requires relatively little treatment. Your doctor may recommend resting for a specific length of time following the accident, which will allow your body to recover from its injuries.

You may also take pain medications, including, in many cases, over-the-counter pain medications, to help treat your traumatic brain injury symptoms. For example, many people suffer from considerable headaches following a concussion, and pain medications can help alleviate it.

If you live alone, you may need someone to monitor you for a few days after the initial accident to make sure that your symptoms do not get worse. You may have to stay in the hospital, go to a long-term care facility, or bring in a home care nurse to check on you periodically during your recovery. However, if you have someone in your home who can monitor you for worsening symptoms, you may not have to worry about ongoing costs.

The Cost of Missed Work

As part of the treatment for even mild traumatic brain injury, your doctor may recommend that you remain out of work, often several days or weeks. The cost of that lost time at work can start adding up quickly, especially if you do not qualify for temporary disability. Working with a lawyer can help you assess how much time at work you have missed due to your injuries and what compensation you should ask for as a result.

Moderate to Severe Traumatic Brain Injury

Cases of moderate to severe traumatic brain injury may require more extensive treatment for the victim to make a full recovery. If you have suffered a moderate to severe traumatic brain injury, you can expect your doctor to require you to spend considerable time out of work while you manage your recovery. You may also need several types of treatment that can aid in your recovery or help you become more capable of managing despite continuing symptoms.

#1. Surgical Treatment

Sometimes, surgical treatment becomes necessary in the immediate aftermath of the accident. You may need to have surgery to repair fractures in your skull or to remove pieces of your skull that have made their way into the brain. If you have immense bleeding into the brain area, you may need to have surgery to stop or slow the bleeding. You may need a surgeon to take out a piece of the bone in your skull to make room for increased swelling or to alleviate the pressure.

You may also have to have those surgeries to help repair or decrease the physical trauma created by traumatic brain injury if your situation does not stabilize or you have continuing symptoms after the accident. For example, your doctor may uncover continued bleeding into your brain several days after the accident, which could necessitate further surgery.

#2. Hospitalization

If you suffered moderate to severe traumatic brain injury, you may find that you need to spend considerable time in the hospital after your accident. You may have to undergo multiple tests to help track the progress of your recovery, or you may go through several procedures intended to help alleviate swelling on the brain or decrease pressure on the brain.

Sometimes, you may go through those treatments while unconscious. Often, severe traumatic brain injury leads to loss of consciousness, including, in some cases, long-term coma. Other times, you may wake up, talk to your doctors, and make decisions about your medical care while hospitalized.

#3. Physical Therapy

Traumatic brain injury can impact your balance and ability to use your body effectively. Sometimes, you may notice that the connections between your brain and body do not seem to work the way they did before. Physical therapy can help you regain strength and relearn how to perform many of the activities you performed in the past.

Physical therapy can also help you regain or maintain strength lost because of extended time bed-bound: for example, if you remained in a coma for some time, or had to rest for a long time after your accident, physical therapy could help you regain some of that lost strength.

#4. Speech and Language Therapy

In cases of severe traumatic brain injury, you may lose the ability to speak freely the way you did before the accident. Frequently, speech and language therapy can help you relearn how to communicate. Sometimes, victims may learn how to communicate on their own, with relatively little assistance. In other cases, assistive devices can make it easier for traumatic brain injury victims to carry on normal communication.

Some people find that they can write or operate a computer keyboard, but have a great deal more trouble engaging in conversation. A speech or language therapist can help provide the tools and modifications needed to improve the patient’s ability to communicate.

#5. Psychological Therapy

In addition to its physical and mental challenges, traumatic brain injury often leaves patients carrying a heavy emotional load. Sometimes, traumatic brain injury interferes with the patient’s ability to manage emotion effectively.

Patients may respond with extreme emotion to relatively minor stimuli: for example, becoming extremely angry over a minor inconvenience like a lack of a fork on a tray or a repetitive noise. Other times, patients may have unexpected mood swings that make them extremely difficult to spend time around.

Through psychological therapy, patients with traumatic brain injury can learn coping mechanisms for dealing with those extreme emotions. They can learn to recognize specific triggers and avoid them, or they may learn how to decrease their responses over time. Often, psychologists work with traumatic brain injury patients to help them process the frustration that often goes along with these severe injuries.

#6. Occupational Therapy

Occupational therapists can offer some of the greatest benefits to patients with traumatic brain injury. Occupational therapy focuses on helping patients regain as many of the skills they had before the accident as possible. Occupational therapists want their patients to have as much independence as they can. They may use two methods to help their patient learn how to cope more effectively.

1. Helping patients relearn how to perform common tasks.

Sometimes, traumatic brain injury can interfere with even muscle memory or the part of the brain that processes common tasks. For example, patients may need help relearning how to eat, how to write, or how to use a computer. An occupational therapist can help them work through that process, including offering workarounds for tasks that the patient cannot handle.

2. Helping patients learn coping strategies or how to manage tasks despite continuing limitations.

For patients with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury, some limitations may become a permanent part of their lives. Patients may not, for example, fully regain their short-term memory, or they might struggle with over-sensitivity for a long time.

An occupational therapist might suggest strategies like:

• Labeling cabinets, drawers, and closets with their contents so that patients can more easily determine the contents of those containers
• Using apps that can help with reminders
• Writing things down to help improve memory
• Utilizing cognitive rehabilitation strategies and exercises to help improve overall cognitive function
• Working through social skills altered or lost because of the accident

An occupational therapist can put together a customized plan based on a patient’s specific, personal weaknesses and the areas in which the patient most needs to improve. Through occupational therapy, patients often learn how to handle the tasks of daily living on their own more effectively. Frequently, those occupational therapists offer the best possible avenue for patient recovery.

#7. Long-Term Care

Sometimes, patients with traumatic brain injury cannot return to their homes and care for themselves immediately after their accidents. If you suffered a severe traumatic brain injury, you may need long-term assistance with even basic self-care tasks.

Some patients will enter a rehabilitation facility, where they can focus heavily on recovery before they attempt to go home. Those long-term care facilities can offer immense support to many patients. While there, patients will not have to worry about home upkeep or other tasks of daily living and can, instead, just focus on recovery. In some cases, patients may need to spend a long time in those facilities, especially if they suffer from a severe traumatic brain injury that affects their ability to function.

Other patients may go home but require assistance and support. An in-home care provider can offer that support. Sometimes, that in-home care provider may come in to administer medications and ensure that the patient takes care of basic care tasks like eating and bathing.

Other times, an in-home care provider may provide regular supervision to ensure that the patient does not harm himself, particularly if the patient develops a habit of wandering off or engaging in dangerous behaviors like forgetting to turn off the stove. Sometimes, in-home care providers can also provide respite care, which may allow family members to get some rest instead of acting as caregivers constantly.

Did You Suffer Traumatic Brain Injury Due to Someone Else’s Negligence?

If someone else’s negligent actions caused your traumatic brain injury, you may deserve compensation for the medical bills you have faced throughout your recovery. Depending on the severity of traumatic brain injury, you may face immense medical costs and ongoing challenges. A lawyer can help you go through the personal injury claim process and determine how much compensation you deserve.