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April 1, 2025
- Blog
- By Cesar Ornelas
Car accidents can cause dangerous injuries that aren’t always immediately apparent. If you’ve discovered that you have a traumatic brain injury following an accident, a personal injury attorney in Carlsbad can help you bring a personal injury claim to get the compensation you need for this potentially devastating and expensive injury.
What Steps Should You Take If You Suffer a Traumatic Brain Injury in an Accident?
See a Doctor
The most important thing here is your health, and the faster you see a doctor after an accident and start treatment, the more likely is that you will experience a full recovery. It’s also very critical that you seek help because you may not be aware that you’ve suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) at all. It can take weeks or sometimes even months before you fully realize that something is wrong; but if you go to the doctor immediately and tell them you’ve been in an accident, they will know the right scans and tests to give you to check for common injuries like TBI.
It might not seem like this is all that important, but because every person is different and the precise nature of each accident is different, you must have a doctor’s diagnosis. Sometimes, it’s obvious something is wrong: you lose consciousness, have blurred vision, or are bleeding from the head and know that you need to get checked for brain damage immediately. But sometimes, everything seems fine at the scene and only over the course of the next few weeks and months do you start to notice headaches, sleeping difficulty, dizziness, difficulty in concentrating, memory changes, sensitivity to light, mood changes and emotional swings, depression, and more.
Many of these symptoms could easily be dismissed as the natural result of the stress of dealing with your accident and any other injuries you have. And if you don’t know you have a brain injury, you might not take the steps required to protect your brain and keep the injury from getting worse.
Why It Matters for a Personal Injury Claim
The main reason to get seen by a doctor is for your safety, but getting diagnosis and treatment as quickly as possible will make it much easier for you to bring a personal injury claim and link your brain injury to the accident. If you don’t have the various scans and tests showing definitively what your issue is, you won’t be able to claim compensation. And if you delay too long in getting medical help, the insurance company may try to argue that your injury was not related to the accident, or, if it was, that you made things worse by delaying your treatment, and thus they should not be responsible for the full extent of your injury.
This matters enormously because TBI is one of the most expensive injuries a victim can suffer. Not only is the cost for treatment high, but it’s common for someone with a TBI to be unable to work for a time as they recover. Depending on how badly injured you are, you may also have to hire help to take care of your home and children or even yourself as you recover. You must be able to recover the full extent of your damages in a personal injury claim.
Studies show that TBI that requires no rehabilitation costs, on average, $18,000 to treat in the first year. If you do require rehabilitation, that cost soars to just under $200,000. Total lifetime costs for a TBI can easily reach into the millions of dollars.
Follow Through on All Medical Advice
Almost as important as getting treatment to begin with is following through on that treatment. Whatever your doctor tells you to do, do it. Whatever your doctor tells you to avoid, avoid it. If your doctor advises you not to work, don’t argue that you need the money and do it anyway.
Talk to your lawyer about options for paying bills and other needs so that you can follow your doctor’s orders. It’s even more important that you avoid all non-essential activities that your doctor may advise you not to engage in, such as sports and hobbies. Concentrate on your recovery.
Why It Matters for a Personal Injury Claim
Once again, insurance companies are notorious for finding any loophole that will keep them from having to pay all of a victim’s damages. If the insurance company can argue that you have made your condition worse by violating doctor’s orders or by not taking your injuries and recovery seriously, they may be able to avoid having to pay some of your costs.
Contact a Personal Injury Attorney in Carlsbad
It’s always a good idea to contact an attorney if you need to bring a personal injury claim, but it’s even more important if your injury is something like TBI. Now is not the time for you to undergo the stress of trying to understand the laws, learn about your rights, deal with an insurance company that may be trying to stall and lowball you at every point, engage in negotiations against a powerful corporation with lots of experience in minimizing claims, and even face the possibility of taking on an insurance company in court. A lawyer takes over all negotiations and communication on your behalf so that you can concentrate on your recovery.
Why It Matters for a Personal Injury Claim
Once you have a lawyer, it’s much more likely that the insurance company will take you seriously and negotiate in better faith. They now know that you are unafraid to pursue your claim and even take them to court if that becomes necessary.
Studies also show that those who bring a personal injury claim with a lawyer almost always come away with a bigger settlement than those who don’t, even after legal fees are considered. With a TBI, it’s very important that your claim be maximized, and your lawyer knows how to do that effectively. Your lawyer will make sure that nothing important is missed and that the evidence is put together clearly to show exactly what you’ve suffered and lost.
Be Careful What You Say
Don’t discuss either your injuries or your claim to anyone but your doctors and your lawyer. Be especially careful of what you say on social media. Even telling your followers that you’re doing OK could be misconstrued to mean that you’re actually not injured very badly or that your claim is overblown.
When you talk to friends and family, always assume that anything you say could end up being passed on to an insurance adjuster or a lawyer for the other side. Once you file a claim, you can expect the insurance company to start scouring your social media accounts and even talking to your family and friends, if they can, to find anything they can use against you.
After a TBI, life is often upended. But don’t lose hope: we can help you fight for your rights in this difficult time. Contact Cesar Ornelas Law now in Carlsbad, CA for help. We also have offices throughout Texas and in New Mexico.
