Whenever you do your best to protect and secure yourself against accidents, there are still possibilities that you can encounter severe injuries that may have a significant effect on your life. Despite being careful, there may be accidents that may happen to you anytime and possibly cause catastrophic injuries.
A catastrophic injury is a type of injury wherein the damage caused can be impactful and life-changing. These injuries may mean that it needs surgery or treatments in the long run. Hence, it would help if you prepared for treatment and recovery options that aren’t a hassle to attain.
Moreover, this article may help you choose eight possible treatment and recovery options for your catastrophic injuries.
- Seek Legal Assistance And Representation After The Accident
You can never go wrong if you’re going to seek legal assistance or hire a lawyer if you’re enduring a catastrophic injury. If you do not know the laws in your state or area, you should hire a legal representation. They can legally assist you regarding compensations or negotiations and what to do with your injury if it’s covered by the law.
Particularly if you’re from San Bernardino, you can hire a Personal Injury Lawyer in San Bernardino that can represent and help you throughout your situation. Furthermore, it would help when you hire lawyers that can handle various and comprehensive types of injury cases.
Additionally, you should assess the lawyers or law firms that you’ll hire to represent you for your compensation claims regarding your catastrophic injuries. If you’ve hired the best lawyers, you may get a huge number of claims for your treatment and help you lessen your recovery fees.
- Hold The Appellant Or Employer Accountable
After hiring a good legal representation, you can hold the person that has caused your catastrophic injuries. Not all catastrophic injuries are self-made. Most of these injuries can come from road accidents, medical negligence, or workplace accidents like in the construction site where you’re working.
You can file a complaint and ask for compensation from the appellant because they should also be held accountable for negligence. For example, if you’re a construction worker, you sustained an injury within your workplace because of a lack of safety gear. You can file a case and claim compensation if your employer has neglected your safety as a worker.
Consulting a workers’ compensation neurologist is crucial for addressing work-related nervous system injuries. A workers comp neurologist diagnoses and develops a treatment plan, which may include medical interventions and therapy. Their documentation is vital for your claim, particularly in disputed cases.
Additionally, catastrophic injuries can also come from medical institutions if they’ve failed to deliver a safe medical procedure to you. If it has an immobility result or affects some of your body parts, you can file a complaint against the hospital and your surgeon because of their malpractice.
- Seek Government Assistance For Your Treatment
The government can directly provide financial or medical assistance to individuals if they pass their eligibility assessment. If you’re short of your expenses for your treatment, you can seek help from the government if they can somehow lessen your fees or free one of your minor laboratory tests needed before your recovery.
Furthermore, your government may also offer alternative recovery steps for you if they can’t provide for your complete treatment. This way, you can maximize their offers so that you can have a speedy and healthy recovery from your serious injuries.
In addition, the assistance of the government can be strict and slow on processing someone’s paper when they seek financial aid because they carefully assess their conditions. Hence, you may not receive immediate help, and you should have your options open for other treatment or assistance.
- Avail The Surgery That You Need
Suppose you’re in urgent need of a surgery schedule for your catastrophic injury. In that case, you should immediately set an appointment for your treatment already to avoid more complications to your physical well-being. Additionally, you should also thoroughly assess if you need surgery for your injury because there may be other ways to treat it.
If you think that the injury you’ve been enduring needs surgery, get immediate help, especially if it concerns your body parts that may affect your whole body to function. For example, you’ve broken your legs or arms, which is in a severe condition. Therefore, you may need to choose to amputate it already to avoid further difficulties.
Amputation can also bring several changes and emotional repercussions because of some disability results and somehow losing a part of your identity. Additionally, there are also different types of catastrophic injuries like:
- Eye injuries: They affect a person’s sight or make one permanently lose vision.
- Mild to traumatic brain injuries: an injury that affects the person’s ability to remember and store memories or even speak.
- Spinal cord injuries: this injury may have an immobility effect on an individual’s body parts.
- Skin injuries: an individual may have caught it from severe burns.
- Crash injuries: this involves vehicular accidents where bones are severely damaged. Moreover, amputation may be an option to stop the excruciating pain.
A neurologist surgeon can perform surgery for catastrophic injuries. They perform craniotomies for brain injuries and spinal surgeries for severe spinal cord trauma. Minimally invasive techniques are used to minimize risks.
- Consistently Attend Your Physical Therapy
Physical therapy can help you recover step by step if you’re particularly experiencing fractures to your body. If you’re not able to move the parts of your body because of catastrophic injuries, physical therapy is there to help restore your body function and prevent it from being in pain.
Moreover, sessions for physical therapy can be expensive, but they can help you improve your body conditions despite the injury you’re enduring. If you have the budget for physical therapy, this may be a good option for you as it will also help you assess your body from time to time.
Now, what types of physical therapy can help you or injured patients somehow recover from these catastrophic injuries?
- Neurological Physical Therapy – a type of therapy that can help improve and lessen your struggle in brain injury, spinal cord injuries, or other brain impairments that sometimes affect your memories.
- Orthopedic Physical Therapy – involves treating the bone or joints through exercising, stretching, or bone scanning.
- Pediatric Therapy – focuses on infants and toddlers with acquired congenital disabilities or injuries that need the utmost attention.
Choosing a physical therapist is a crucial decision in your rehabilitation journey. Consult your primary care physician for recommendations based on your specific condition. Ensure the therapist is licensed and holds the appropriate credentials, usually a Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) degree in the United States. Consider the therapist’s specialization and experience, focusing on their expertise in your specific area of need.
- Medications For Your Injury
You can also choose drinking medicines to lessen your pain from the injury you have obtained. Medications may be expensive, but this is the least painful procedure that you may take if your injury is too sensitive for conducting surgery.
For example, medication is still required for your burns. You can have this option instead of immediately going to extensive surgery. However, this remains at the discretion of a medical professional. If your doctor requires you to take medications first, you can still take medicines.
On the other hand, you can treat them yourself if it isn’t that severe if you get burnt. You can use a cold compress, ointments, or pain relievers. However, if it’s on second or third-degree burns, you can drink over-the-counter medicines like ibuprofen and get to your nearest clinic or hospital to have it treated.
If prescribed medication, follow the instructions, ensuring you take the recommended dosages at the specified times and complete the full course of treatment, even if your symptoms improve before it’s finished.
- Look For An Appropriate Insurance Or Medical Benefit For You
Instead of government assistance, some local government units may offer you state disability insurance that covers workers’ partial wages because of their injuries instead of government assistance. This insurance came from the deductions of other workers to help their co-workers whenever accidents have occurred.
Furthermore, this compensation claim can help you recover from your catastrophic injuries because it can help you financially when you’re going on treatment or therapy sessions. This insurance doesn’t only cover physical injuries, but mental and other medical conditions that may affect your work performance too.
Disability insurance serves as income replacement if you’re unable to work due to your catastrophic injury. Long-term disability insurance is especially important for those facing permanent disabilities that prevent them from returning to work. Some individuals purchase supplemental insurance policies, such as critical illness insurance.
- Do A Checkup For Your Mental Health Condition
After enduring a catastrophic injury, your mental well-being may also be affected because of the repercussions from the damage. For example, suppose you have an injury that caused immobility or changed your physical appearance, in that case, you may be affected by it, leading to being clinically diagnosed with depression.
Furthermore, it’s important to remember that mental health can also affect your physical health because it can manifest on the outside if you’re not taking care of yourself properly. You can decide whether you’ll consult a psychologist if you’re also experiencing trauma from the accident.
You may be taking a step on taking care of your physical damages from the catastrophic accident. Still, you can also consider and make sure that you’re healing from the emotional damage after the injury.
Conclusion
These options can help you choose your next steps after obtaining a catastrophic injury, particularly in a crucial situation. You should have someone who will guide you throughout your medical treatment because it may be difficult if you’re the only one taking care of yourself and your health records. Having someone to assist you in such a difficult situation makes it less stressful for you to recover from your injury.
Furthermore, catastrophic injuries may be difficult and complex to treat. Still, you can always have several options to lessen the pain of your injuries and the expense for your immediate recovery. Despite catastrophic injuries being complex to treat and it’s rare to fully recover from them, there are still many options for your medical treatment.
