You’re likely already familiar with the concept of nerve damage. But if you’re like many people, you may not have thought deeply about how nerve damage can impact your daily life. Here’s what you need to know about nerve damage, how it happens, and what to do if you’ve suffered it because of another person’s negligence.
What Is Nerve Damage?
Your nerves are like information highways connecting your brain to your body. Signals go in both directions, and they’re a key part of virtually every daily activity. Here’s a look at how some of this information exchange can support your daily activities:
- Body-to-Brain Communication: Relays feelings of pain, temperature, pressure, and more to the brain
- Brain-to-Body Communication: Lets you move your limbs and regulates processes like heartbeat, breathing, and others
As you might imagine, when these nerves are damaged, the flow of communication gets disrupted. In turn, that makes it difficult or impossible for you to function normally.
Think of it like a busy highway — when there are no delays or major issues with the road, it’s business as usual. However, if a bridge collapses (effectively creating a break in the roadway), traffic comes to a halt, and people can’t get to where they need to go.
What Are the Different Types of Nerve Damage?
The explanation above is a very simplified one. Not all nerve damage completely eliminates feeling and function from an area of your body. There are many types of nerve injury, and each one varies in terms of symptoms and severity. Here’s a look at the three broad categories of nerve injury:
Neuropraxia
Neuropraxia is the mildest type of nerve injury. It happens when there’s enough pressure on a nerve to get in the way of proper signaling. Often, that pressure comes from other injuries, like broken bones or tendon and ligament tears.
The symptoms of neuropraxia are usually fairly mild and can include the following:
- Stinging
- Numbness
- Burning
- Weakness
Even though the pain and injuries typically aren’t severe, neuropraxia doesn’t necessarily heal quickly — it often takes a month or so for symptoms to disappear.
Axonotmesis
Axonotmesis is another kind of nerve injury. It involves a break or other disruption in an axon — a fiber that carries nerve impulses from a cell to the other tissue surrounding it. Depending on which axon is impacted, this injury can be very severe. You can experience symptoms such as:
- Muscle wasting
- Pain
- Total sensory loss of the affected area
- Total inability to move the affected area
The length of your healing time is heavily influenced by where on the axon the break occurred. For the nerve to go back to functioning fully, nerve fibers must regrow from the nerve cell to the connecting tissue. In adults, it takes about a month to grow an inch of nerve fiber, so it can take several months to regain feeling and function.
Neurotmesis
Neurotmesis is the most severe kind of nerve damage. It is a complete nerve rupture, so it creates even more disruption than axonotmesis. Because the nerve is totally detached, you won’t feel pain.
Instead, you won’t feel anything at all in the impacted areas. Muscle wasting happens quickly, and the nerve cannot heal on its own — it has to be reattached surgically. Unfortunately, in many cases, even surgery doesn’t completely restore nerve function.
What Kinds of Accidents and Injuries Cause Nerve Damage?
You might think of nerve damage happening when your body is subjected to sudden and severe force (like the force you experience in a car accident). That’s certainly one possible cause, but nerve damage can happen in a variety of situations.
For example, carpal tunnel syndrome is a kind of nerve damage that office workers and other people who do a lot of typing for their jobs frequently experience. While it’s not an exhaustive list, these are some of the more common accidents and injuries that lead to nerve damage.
Car Accidents
Lacerations (cuts) and crush injuries are two common causes of nerve damage, and car crash victims regularly experience both. If cuts are deep enough, they can sever major nerves. The pressure that creates crush injuries is also great enough to cause long-term or permanent nerve damage.
Depending on how severe your other injuries from the car accident are, it can be difficult to spot nerve damage. Other injuries may also cause temporary nerve pain, as significant swelling can put pressure on surrounding nerves.
Overuse Injuries
Overuse injuries can result from work, hobbies, and even ordinary daily activities. Overusing a part of your body can lead to a number of problems, but pinched or entrapped nerves (like those you get with carpal tunnel and cubital tunnel syndrome) are common.
Seeking prompt medical treatment as soon as you start to experience nerve pain is important. The longer you wait, the more severe the injury is likely to become.
Falls
Falling can cause lacerations, broken bones, and other serious injuries that can damage nerves. Even if you don’t suffer deep cuts or crush injuries, the impact of the fall may be enough to damage your nerves.
Exposure to Toxic Chemicals
If your work requires you to be around toxic chemicals like mercury or lead, you may be at risk for nerve damage. Usually, nerve damage only happens when you’re exposed to chemicals like these over a long period of time.
Tampa Personal Injury Lawyers When You Need Them Most
For many accident victims, nerve damage is about a whole lot more than just numbness and tingling. Because it can cause total loss of feeling and movement, nerve damage also has the potential to have a serious negative impact on your life.
That impact is likely your main concern. However, you should also keep in mind that nerve damage has the potential to be quite expensive, leading you to incur both medical costs and lost wages.
Nerve injuries can be devastating. If another person’s negligence caused your injury, we believe you deserve compensation for what you’ve had to go through. If the attorneys at Winters & Yonker Personal Injury Lawyers take your case, we will offer you empathetic, compassionate service while fighting to get you the compensation you deserve.
If you’ve been hurt because of another person’s actions, we want to hear from you. Contact us by calling (813) 223-6200 to set up a free consultation with an attorney from Winters & Yonker Personal Injury Lawyers today to learn about your legal options.
