After a motor vehicle accident, if you don’t feel any serious pain or have obvious broken bones or bleeding, you might think that you weren’t injured in the collision. However, if you hit your head in the accident, you may have an invisible injury — a mild traumatic brain injury (TBI).
Mild TBIs often go undiagnosed after car accidents because they are not easy to identify. Unfortunately, they can still create very serious problems for those who suffer from them. Without professional medical care, a mild TBI can disrupt a person’s entire life, making it difficult or impossible to work a job or relate to your family and community.
Many people see the word “mild” and assume that it means that the injury is not truly serious. However, a mild TBI is only mild in relation to its more severe counterparts, which often land a victim in a coma or kills them outright. Despite its name, a mild TBI can truly destroy lives.
If you believe you might have a mild TBI, the first thing you should do is seek out medical attention. A doctor can help you determine whether or not you suffered a mild TBI in your accident. If you do actually have a mild TBI, you may deserve some compensation for your injury and any other losses caused by the Cincinnati or Covington car accident.
Mild TBIs may have obvious physical symptoms
While mild TBIs often do not express themselves in obvious ways, there are some exceptions. In some cases, a victim may experience headaches that last longer than normal, or may just have a headache that lasts indefinitely.
Similarly, a mild TBI sufferer may experience nausea or even seizures, which can cause additional threats. It is important to remember that a brain injury could affect just about any area of your body, because the brain controls all of your body’s functions.
Other symptoms are less obvious but still destructive
Some of the greatest problems caused by mild TBIs are relatively small problems that stack up on top of each other to create huge messes.
Those who suffer from mild TBIs often find that they feel “foggy” when they try to concentrate on any task or find that they simply cannot stay focused for more than a few minutes at a time. At the same time, victims often get very irritable with themselves and others, which can make working in any profession difficult.
Another common effect of mild TBIs is a change in how a person understands conversation or the things they read. Sufferers often have trouble making sense of the things they read, or may constantly misinterpret what others say to them. This can easily strain professional and personal relationships.
A person may even find that their smell and taste senses change, or aspects of their personality. In addition, these symptoms can last up to a year, which is certainly enough time to destroy the victim’s career and seriously harm their personal relationships.
If you believe that you may have a mild TBI, please seek out proper medical attention as soon as possible, for the sake of your job and the people who love and care for you. Further, if you think you may have a Kentucky or Ohio brain injury claim, schedule a free consultation with a Covington or Cincinnati medical malpractice lawyer at The Lawrence Firm, PSC as soon as possible.