Atlanta Pedestrian Accident Attorney

Traumatic Brain Injuries

Even a minor traumatic brain injury can leave a victim with symptoms more than a year after the accident. Traumatic brain injury rarely goes the way it gets covered in the movies, either. You do not just lose your long-term memories or simply fail to recognize common people in your life. Traumatic brain injury can impact you physically, mentally, and emotionally.

You may suffer from:

• Ringing in your ears
• Sleep disturbances, whether you sleep too much or struggle to fall asleep at all
• Emotional disturbances, including increased anger or inappropriate reactions to common stimuli
• Changes in personality
• Difficulty concentrating
• Trouble focusing on a single task

With all those challenges, no wonder people with traumatic brain injury struggle in many areas of their lives! They may have to deal with the inability to work while they recover or struggle to maintain relationships.

Many friends and family members of traumatic brain injury victims notice that the victim’s personality changes dramatically after an accident. Others note that the victim has extreme reactions to even minor emotional situations, which can destroy relationships, make it hard to interact, and make them feel overwhelmed in public.

Spinal Cord Injuries

If the vehicle directly strikes your spine or you land on the pavement or another obstacle with your back, you may suffer a spinal cord injury. Victims with spinal cord injuries may spend the rest of their lives in a wheelchair, paralyzed below the site of the injury. Even incomplete spinal cord injury, when the spinal cord does not sever completely as a result of the force of the accident, can cause the victim to suffer decreased mobility, feeling, and function below the site of the injury.

Thanks to that paralysis, victims with spinal cord injuries may have a hard time going back to their usual job duties. Victims with high spinal cord injuries, which can impact the arms and hands as well as the legs, may struggle to sit behind a desk and take care of normal tasks. Even filing and typing may prove incredibly difficult!

Victims with damage lower in the spinal cord may suffer paralysis from the waist down, making it difficult for them to work in more physical professions. Even those who can eventually return to work may have a hard time adapting to their new limitations. The first year after the accident can prove especially difficult.

Amputations

It’s gruesome, but the extreme force from a speeding vehicle can rip a limb from a victim’s body. For some victims, however, the amputation does not occur immediately during the accident itself. You may, for example, have suffered massive crushing damage to your limb in the accident. Doctors may choose to remove the limb to help improve your overall quality of life. Decreased blood flow from that crushing damage can also kill the tissue in the limb over time, resulting in eventual amputation.

Life as an amputee retains plenty of opportunities, but it also brings with it a lot of difficulties—not to mention the ongoing expenses. Amputees must often replace their prosthetics every few years as they wear down. After the amputation, victims may initially struggle to participate in many of the activities that brought them joy in the past. Work can prove particularly difficult in those early days, especially for victims who worked in physical professions like construction or a warehouse environment.

Broken Bones

While broken bones may not cause the same damage as injuries like spinal cord damage or traumatic brain injury, they certainly bring with them their own challenges. The force from a pedestrian accident often causes multiple broken bones. Victims with broken bones may struggle to care for themselves, especially if they have multiple breaks. Some victims have trouble returning to work for weeks or even months after the accident while their broken bones heal. They may also need multiple surgeries to help repair those broken bones.

Broken bones can also continue to cause difficulty years after the initial accident. Some victims find that the pain from broken bones continues for years, especially in bad weather. Others struggle with ongoing mobility limitations. Even the best modern medicine has to offer cannot always restore full mobility and strength.

Road Rash

The force of the speeding vehicle caused you to hit the pavement hard. You may even have ended up dragged along for several feet before the vehicle finally came to a stop. As your skin dragged across the pavement, you may have suffered severe road rash.

Road rash presents many of the same symptoms as a severe burn. Victims with road rash frequently have extensive scarring since road rash strips away the skin. Victims may also suffer high rates of infection and other complications, especially if they do not or cannot clean out the wound completely because road rash often leaves debris and dirt from the road in the wound. Road rash may leave victims extremely self-conscious long after the initial injury, especially if they sustain severe scarring.