Nerve Damage

Nerve damage can be one of the trickiest wounds to treat after an accident. You can’t set it like a broken bone or sew it up like a cut. You may need extremely delicate surgery to hope to get any function back, and often, the recovery process can take months.

Below, we’ll discuss nerve damage, common symptoms of this type of injury, and what sort of compensation you might be able to get if you experienced nerve damage in an accident.

Meet Your Nervous System

Your nervous system is a complex network of nerves that send messages back and forth between your brain and every part of your body. Your nerves allow you to experience the world around you through your five senses, and they allow you to move your body. They also control the unconscious functions your body performs to keep you alive, including breathing, your heartbeat, digestion, and more.

You have over seven trillion nerves spread throughout every part of your body. When you decide to move your arm, your brain sends an electrical signal down your nerves to the muscles that control that arm, telling it to move. If you wrap your hand around a cup, your fingers send messages back up those nerves to your brain, telling it that they can feel the cup in your hand.

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What Is Nerve Damage?

As you might imagine, when the nerves carrying these signals get damaged, the signal gets interrupted. If the nerves that carry signals to your arm are cut off from your brain, those signals won’t make it to your arm muscles, and you won’t be able to move that arm. Likewise, your brain won’t be able to tell what that arm is feeling, so you’ll experience numbness.

Most of the time when we refer to nerve damage, we’re talking about peripheral nerve damage, or damage to the nerves in the outer parts of your body. These nerves can get damaged in a variety of ways, including burns, cuts, and more. You could also damage your spinal cord, the hub where all your nerves come together and move up your spine to reach your brain.

Nerve damage can be temporary or permanent, depending on the extent to which the nerve was harmed. Nerves that were compressed, burned, or mildly damaged may be able to heal and return to normal function. But if you sever a large number of nerves, such as in your spinal cord, you may never be able to restore full function to that part of your body.

Symptoms of Nerve Damage

There are a few symptoms that can indicate you might have nerve damage.

• Numbness or tingling – When your brain can’t get sensation signals from a limb, it can create a numb or tingling sensation. This is similar to what happens when you have a limb “fall asleep” after being compressed for a while. If this numbness goes on for days or weeks, it could be a sign of nerve damage.
• Pain or sensitivity – You may notice a throbbing, shooting, or burning pain in one of your limbs, or that area may become extremely sensitive to touch. You might experience pain during activities that shouldn’t be painful, such as normal touch or the weight of a light blanket.
• Weakness and loss of function – Depending on the extent of your nerve damage, you could experience weakness in the affected limb. And in the cases of severe spinal cord injuries, you may lose the ability to use this part of your body entirely.

You could also sustain damage to your autonomic nerves, those that control your unconscious body functions. Symptoms of this type of nerve damage can include heat intolerance, sweating dysfunction, problems with your bowels or bladder, digestive issues, or drops in your blood pressure.

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Compensation for Nerve Damage

If you’ve suffered nerve damage in an accident that wasn’t your fault, you could be entitled to compensation. This settlement can help to cover your medical bills, the cost of your ongoing treatment, and the loss of any income in the aftermath of your accident. It can also help to make up for the pain and suffering you’ve experienced, as well as any loss of quality of life.

If you’re seeking compensation for nerve damage, the personal injury lawyers at FVF Law want to help. Our attorneys put people first, and we’ve recovered millions of dollars for our clients. Schedule a free, no-obligation-required consultation with us today to discuss how we can help in your case. Call (512) 982-9328 today.