As child injury lawyers, we’ve seen how serious injuries can impact an entire family. Today, we want to discuss how spinal cord injuries can change a child’s life.

What's Considered a Spinal Cord Injury?

According to the Mayo Clinic, a spinal cord injury is defined as: “damage to any part of the spinal cord.” This type of injury can cause drastic changes, potentially causing parts of the body to lose strength or feeling.

Commonly, we see these types of injuries result in paraplegia or quadriplegia. Spinal cord injuries to children can be caused by many different types of events or incidents, including:

  • Car accidents
  • Truck wrecks
  • Daycare injuries
  • Playground injuries
  • Or product liability incidents, like furniture tip overs

These injuries are serious and may require years, or even a lifetime, of treatment and care. When thinking about getting help for your child’s spinal cord injury, it’s important to remember three things.

First – your child will have to adapt to their injury in a physical way – which can include:

  • relying on a wheelchair to get around,
  • help for proper feeding,
  • and specialized bathing methods.

Other adjustments may be necessary, like:

  • Making your home more accessible for your child
  • Getting additional care, such as around the clock nursing or physical therapy
  • Changes in schools or school schedules
  • and new methods of transportation

Spinal cord injuries are not the same for everyone. These injuries can require unique physical care depending on how severe the injury was and how the recovery has progressed. That’s why it’s important to speak to someone with experience helping victims of spinal cord injuries – so they can get you the help you need for your child.

The second thing to think about when seeking help for your child’s spinal cord injury is the significant psychological toll it’ll take on them.

Adjusting to life with a spinal cord injury can be especially difficult for children, as they have to sit out of what was once part of their everyday activities – like sports, playtime, or school events. Getting your child the psychological help they need is a key step in adjusting to life with their injury.

The third step parents can take is looking into the incident itself to see who was responsible. It can be difficult to revisit the event that caused your child’s life to change forever.

But knowing who to hold responsible can make a world of difference. And if someone else’s recklessness caused your child to suffer from a spinal cord injury, they must be held accountable.

As a parent, it’s heartbreaking for you to witness these big and unexpected changes in your child’s life.

That’s why it’s essential that you get the necessary tools to help your child move forward and get answers from those who caused your child’s injury to happen in the first place. Most importantly, holding the responsible parties accountable will prevent it from happening again.

If you have more questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team. We help families get the resources they need after a serious injury has happened to their little one.

Whether that’s:

  • finding the right doctor,
  • figuring out how to accommodate your child’s new physical needs,
  • or finding the right lifecare-planner to give your family peace-of-mind,

The Button Law Firm is here to help and keep you moving forward.