A lawyer can help protect your rights and help you obtain fair compensation while you rebuild your life.
When you suffer a brain injury, there may be no obvious wounds. Maybe you were in a car crash, fell from a significant height, or received a sudden blow to the head, but there are no visible scars, stitches, or bandages. Because everything seems to be okay on the outside, friends, family, co-workers, and your employer may assume that you’re okay.
However, it’s possible that you feel different in the days, weeks, and months after the accident. It’s possible for concentration to become more challenging, for you to feel more tired than usual, or you may feel moody—easy to anger or sometimes sad and depressed. There are subtle changes in behavior that can be warning signs that you’ve suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI). For many people, the symptoms aren’t visible but can create havoc on their lives.
The skilled attorneys at Peterson Law Firm understand that brain injury symptoms don’t always show up on imaging tests. That’s why it’s important to obtain legal counsel if you feel even subtle shifts in your behavior, cognition, and/or moods. Our Kansas City brain injury lawyers represent victims who suffer from invisible symptoms due to a brain injury caused by someone else’s negligence. Here, we discuss how to recognize invisible symptoms that may be due to an brain injury accident and how we can help you obtain fair compensation for damages.
Invisible Brain Injury Symptoms: Why They’re Ignored or Dismissed
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), people who experience a moderate or severe TBI can go on to have chronic health problems. CDC research found that of those patients who were still alive five years after the TBI, 57% were moderately or severely disabled, and over half did not have a job, though they were employed when they were injured.
Some victims of an accident brain injury experience immediate issues that are easily detected. They may feel dizzy, have a headache, or feel nauseous. But others may develop cognitive or emotional symptoms long after the accident—sometimes even days or weeks later.
The brain controls memory, emotions, thought processes, and physical coordination. When it experiences trauma, the effects can interfere with daily functioning in ways that can’t always be explained or measured. Because symptoms can’t be easily seen or substantiated by technology or test results, insurance companies, employers, and even friends and family may question their validity or seriousness.
Reasons That Symptoms Get Dismissed
There are a variety of reasons that a patient with a brain injury may not experience, recognize, or present symptoms right away, including the following.
- Symptoms are confused with stress. Patients with a brain injury may have memory lapses, feel irritable, and/or suffer from fatigue. These are sometimes mistaken by doctors and others as stress or emotional strain instead of neurological damage.
- Patients feel pressure to re-engage in normal life. Many patients feel pressure to get back to normal life and a regular schedule. They may think they should return to work quickly, pick up socially where they left off, and get back on track with exercise and daily functions. This desire for a rapid recovery may cause patients to ignore the warning signs that something’s not right.
- Symptoms don’t present right away. Some effects of a traumatic brain injury appear days or weeks after the accident. This delay can make it harder to connect symptoms to the original incident.
- Imaging results may not detect symptoms. Standard scans may appear normal even when cognitive impairment exists. Brain function changes do not always show up on imaging tests, such as MRIs, CT scans, or the Glasgow coma scale (GCS), which measures consciousness and can result in a normal score even if the patient sustained a serious brain injury.
Invisible Symptoms of a Brain Injury
Every brain injury is different, and no two patients experience the same exact symptoms. However, here are some common symptoms people with brain injuries deal with:
Fatigue
It’s common for any person to have moments during the day when they’d like to sit down or take a breather, even if they haven’t been exercising or doing physical activities. However, fatigue after a brain injury relates to mental fatigue. After a brain injury, it’s possible for patients to find common tasks tiring because greater concentration is needed, and the brain feels overworked and needs a rest. This mental exhaustion may interfere with your ability to get through a workday without a break or nap.
Personality Changes
Many brain injury accident victims say they feel like a different person after their injury. They may develop a lack of interest in a sport or hobby they were once passionate about or become interested in some other pastime. However, there can be more serious changes, including the following:
- They may have sudden shifts in mood. People with a TBI may have a sudden change in mood or have an extreme emotional response to a situation. They may raise their voice, cry, or laugh.
- They may experience changes in social behavior. People with a TBI may behave inappropriately in social situations. They may hurt others, interrupt them, or make inappropriate comments. They also begin avoiding people they often socialized with.
- They may feel unmotivated. People with a TBI may refuse to do things or participate the way they used to. They may so “no” more often, refusing to engage in usual activities. They may also have difficulty starting tasks or following through.
People who’ve experienced a TBI may also become aggressive, inflexible, or obsessive, which can be alarming to friends and family members. Often, a brain-injured person might be completely unaware of how their personality has changed or how the injury has affected them. This lack of insight can be particularly difficult for partners and family members to deal with.
Speech Problems
Sometimes, a brain injury causes communication problems by impairing the physical ability to speak, rather than the ability to understand and express language. One main speech disorder caused by a TBI is dysarthria.
This condition often results in reduced control and clarity of speech. When dysarthria occurs in isolation, a person's ability to speak will be impaired, but their ability to understand language will be intact. Depending on the location and severity of the brain injury, some common symptoms include the following:
- Monotone or robotic voice
- Imprecise articulation
- Slurred, thick, or mumbled speech
- Breathy, strained, or hoarse voice
- Reduced volume, speaks in a whisper
Patients with these types of symptoms may be misunderstood by friends, co-workers, friends, and family members who might think they’re intoxicated or using drugs.
Disinhibition
The frontal lobe of the brain stops a person from saying inappropriate things or behaving in appropriate ways. When the frontal lobe is damaged, a brain injury patient may say or do things without forethought. They may seem rude or insensitive; however the truth is, after the brain injury, they’ve lost the filter that most people have.
They may have a loss of control over social behavior, so they may behave in an over-familiar manner with the wrong people at the wrong time. Additionally, disinhibition can, in extreme cases, lead those with a brain injury to become entangled in the criminal justice system.
Protecting Your Future: Why You Need Legal Counsel
Hidden symptoms of a brain injury can significantly alter a person’s quality of life; however, seeking compensation from the negligent party that caused the injury can present unique challenges. Our Kansas City brain injury lawyers can help to ensure you obtain a fair settlement by doing the following:
- Use experts to fight insurance companies. Because brain injury symptoms can be invisible, insurance companies may argue that the injury is exaggerated or unrelated to the accident. We fight those claims by using specialized medical experts, such as neurologists, neuropsychologists, and rehabilitation specialists, to validate your symptoms.
- Use symptom journals. Our lawyers will likely ask you to maintain a detailed journal of all your symptoms. On a daily basis, they’ll want you to document headaches, cognitive issues, and mood swings to help prove the ongoing, long-term nature of the injury.
- Refute claims by insurance companies. Our attorneys know the tactics insurance companies will use against a TBI claim. If your TBI was “mild,” we will reframe the term to explain that the initial classification doesn’t mean the symptoms are insignificant or that recovery will be quick. We’ll also gather medical records to prove that the current symptoms are directly caused by the accident and not prior health issues, refuting that you may have a preexisting condition.