Nerve damage is quite serious and can cause long-lasting, limited mobility. In some cases, severe nerve damage may never heal completely.
As such, it’s very important to know if you’ve suffered nerve damage in a motor vehicle accident. You need to get proper medical attention, and you may have lasting needs — like physical therapy — that come with long-term costs.
Three signs that may point to nerve damage include:
- Changes in sensitivity. This could mean that your senses in that area are heightened, or it could mean that you experience numbness and have trouble feeling anything.
- Weakness. You may have trouble using a knee or an elbow joint, for instance. It’s not painful when you move it, but it simply feels weak. You don’t have anything near the strength you use to, even though the actual muscles themselves appear fine.
- Fasciculation. This is simply the medical term for uncontrolled twitching.
It’s important to note that nerve injuries can be slightly different for everyone. There are other symptoms that may occur — the sensation of pins and needles, paralysis, muscle atrophy, and more — and the severity can be different from one injury to the next.
The key thing to remember, though, is that nerve damage can be expensive to treat and the treatment can take months or even years. An injury that took less than a second to occur could really drag on and even keep you out of work. As you’re facing these challenges, you may want to know about your legal rights to get financial compensation from the driver who caused the crash.
Source: WebMD, “Nerve Pain and Nerve Damage,” accessed Oct. 11, 2017
