A severe car or truck accident can be a life-defining moment. After all, it can leave you or your loved one with injuries that are so significant that they result in permanent disability. This, in turn, can upend your financial stability, prevent you or your loved one from doing the things you love, and leave you with a crushing psychological burden that’s difficult to shake.
These types of overwhelming losses are often seen in truck accidents, where the size and weight of a big rig devastates a passenger vehicle. Those who are fortunate enough to survive these wrecks may be left with brain and spinal cord injuries, which can easily lead to the harms mentioned above. But just how expensive is it to care for one of these injuries?
The costs of treating a spinal cord injury
The exact costs that you or your loved one will face after suffering a spinal cord injury depends on the specific type of injury suffered. Those injuries that leave you or your loved one with more limited mobility are going to be more expensive to care for. But to give you an idea of what you and your loved one may be up against, let’s look at the costs associated with treating some of these injuries:
- Paraplegia: This type of injury, which leaves you without motor function in your lower extremities, can cost more than $500,000 to treat in the year following your injury. Each subsequent year may then cost in excess of $75,000. Over your lifetime, then, you could be facing more than $2 million in medical and rehabilitation expenses.
- Low tetraplegia: This more severe injury is even more expensive to treat, coming in at more than $800,000 in costs during the first year of recovery. Each subsequent year can rack up more than $100,000 in costs for a lifetime expense of up to approximately $3.7 million.
- Hight tetraplegia: This is the most serious spinal cord injury, and it’s the most expensive to treat. Those who suffer this kind of injury are often left with more than $1 million in medical costs in the year following their accident, and each year after that can easily see more than $200,000 costs. This leaves victims and their families with up to more than $5 million in lifetime costs to treat the injury.
It’s obvious that most, if not all, people who suffer these injuries are going to be unable to cover their financial losses on their own, even if they have great insurance coverage. Additionally, these expenses don’t even touch other losses that you might face, such as lost wages, pain and suffering, mental anguish, and loss of enjoyment of life. These damages can be overwhelming, too, leaving you feeling hopeless for the future.
Finding accountability for your accident injuries
But not all hope is lost. Although there may not be much that you can do about your physical condition, you may be able to offset your financial losses and recover compensation for the emotional and psychological harm that’s been caused to you. This relief will most likely come in the form of a personal injury lawsuit.
If you want to maximize your chances of imposing liability on the party who harmed you and recover the compensation that you’re owed, then you might want to think about discussing the specifics of your case with an attorney who is experienced in handling these matters. By doing so, you may find that you don’t have to let your injury define your life, and instead you can take more control over the situation and your future.