In your lifetime, you might become a victim of a car accident. First things first, don’t worry about your car as it can be replaced. The most immediate and important thing is knowing if you’ve been injured.
Certain auto or motorcycle accidents could result in possible damage to your spinal column or brain, which means you may have difficulty in returning to normal. The brain and spinal column have little capacity to repair themselves even with surgical intervention. If you are seriously injured, chances are the paramedics will stabilize you and cart you off to the hospital where your injuries can be assessed immediately. If your injuries seem minor, you may be released on the spot. Even if your injuries seem minor you should still have a full medical exam with your healthcare provider. Quite often injuries don’t show up until days to months after.
Make sure you have photos of your external injuries as provided by your doctor and any scans they have done to prove that they are from the accident. If your condition persists and possibly worsens after your first check-up, you will need to go back to your doctor for further treatment.
The next step you should take is to contact a lawyer with brain injury expertise who can assess your rights and determine if you qualify for a Personal Injury Settlement. A settlement from your accident will pay for your pain and suffering, medical bills, lost wages, and future medical costs.
The attorneys at Chester Law Group specialize in severe brain/spinal injuries and personal injury settlements due to car, truck, and motorcycle accidents. Contact the Chester Law Group at 800-218-4243 or fill out our digital form on our Contact Us page. Our expert Brain Injury Lawyers know what assistance you will need in terms of medical evidence and will provide information on the proper steps to take to ensure success with your accident claim.
Causes for Constant Headaches After Car Accidents
After a brain injury, you might be experiencing constant headaches. It is reported that 50% of brain injuries in vehicle accidents have headaches. Sometimes these headaches don’t show up for one to 3 months after your accident. Many people try to self-medicate not realizing they need help. This can be a serious condition and should be treated as a symptom of brain injury. Some individuals continue to have headache pain for a year or more. Don’t let this happen to you. You need to take this seriously and seek medical attention.
Headaches can be caused by many other injuries besides brain damage. For instance, an upper cervical (neck) herniated disc pressing on a nerve can cause a headache, as well as pressure on one of the arteries in the neck caused by ligament damage to the ligaments in the neck. You should know, however, that among personal injury lawyers, it is common knowledge that post-trauma mild brain injuries are the most often missed injury by doctors.
Why this is, we do now know.
- Perhaps doctors are not taking the time to investigate the issue because it seems everyone has headaches these days.
- Maybe doctors are not well versed in modern diagnostic techniques like Diffusion Tensor Imaging studies that can show mild traumatic brain injuries to the white matter in the brain.
- And unfortunately, perhaps they do not tie the symptoms that appear weeks or months later to the prior trauma and therefore do not suspect brain injury.
Whatever the reason, don’t be surprised if your doctor plays down your headaches and tells you to mask the symptoms with pain pills. If you are having headaches days or weeks after an accident, there is a reason why, and your doctor has an ethical obligation to find out why. It is important to talk to your doctor about headaches that don’t go away and don’t just accept the long term “take a pill” solution that may be offered to you.
Once you know exactly what is wrong with you, specialist doctors can more effectively attempt to treat the actual cause of the problem, not the symptom. In my experience, if the average person knew how often family doctors fail to diagnose and treat mild traumatic brain injury and do diagnostic testing to confirm that diagnosis, they would be shocked.
You need to understand that the brain is a very delicate organ that can be easily injured in an impact. Your brain and spinal column are floating in cerebral spinal fluid. In a car accident, your body will come to a quick stop causing your brain to crash against your skull causing it to compress. Then your brain will bounce back on the opposite side causing a second compression. This can cause severe inflammation, neuron cell death, blood vessel breakage, and tearing of axon fiber tracts. All of this can contribute to headache pain after the fact particularly as inflammation of tissues increases. If you have blood vessel tearing, you will have bleeding in the brain. Brain tissue beyond this point will not receive enough oxygen to survive and will die causing permanent brain damage. If neurons don’t receive oxygen, they will die within 2 to 4 minutes. Neurons that are left functioning don’t have the capacity to generate daughter cells like other tissues, so the brain cannot replace itself. Once a neuron dies there is no way to replace it.
With brain compression, neuron cell death, and vessel damage, and stress can create changes in blood flow that will create symptoms of headaches. If you have had an initial scan done shortly after your accident, damage may not be apparent. You need to pay attention to any changes in your behavior and any pain including headaches that might occur. These symptoms indicate head trauma and you will need to be reexamined and get another scan done. Common scans done include MRI, CAT scan, and X-Rays. It could take weeks to months before your injury can be observed. Make sure you keep good records and get copies of everything. Don’t just rely on your doctor keeping records.
Learn more about different brain scans in our article: Understanding Brain Injury Scans After an Accident
If you have been seriously hurt in a truck, car, or motorcycle accident and experienced brain injury such as inflammation, neuronal cell death, and/or headaches, you may be entitled to financial compensation for pain and suffering, medical bills, and lost wages. These types of accidents often involve long-term brain dysfunction and chronic headaches, so you need to consider continued medical care and loss of your ability to earn wages in the future.
The Chester Law Group is a Personal Injury Law Firm experienced in truck, car, and motorcycle accidents involving brain injuries. We can guide you through a Personal Injury Settlement if you’ve been in an auto accident and are experiencing injuries. If this is the case, it is important that you speak with one of our brain injury lawyers before attending a Defense Medical Exam (DME) and don’t ask a doctor for advice. We can be there to help advise you every step of the way. Call us today at 800-218-4243.