What if I Have Nerve Damage After a Car Crash in Charleston?

Car crash victims may experience devastating injuries, but for some, the pain doesn’t end there. Some victims may also experience nerve damage. These internal injuries may be invisible, but they can leave you dealing with excruciating pain for months or longer after a car crash.

At Roden Law, our trusted law firm is prepared to help. If you sustained nerve damage in a car crash, we encourage you to contact an experienced Charleston car accident attorney at our firm to tell us more about how you were injured. There is no costs for your initial consultation, and we welcome your questions. Our legal team has decades of combined experience, and we are deeply committed to protecting the rights of our clients.

Request your FREE Consultation today: 1-844-RESULTS.

What Is Nerve Damage After a Charleston Car Crash?

Nerve damage happens when the sudden force of a car crash injures nerve fibers that carry signals throughout your body. Car crashes generate powerful forces that stretch nerves beyond their breaking point, tear nerve fibers, or compress nerves against bones and tissues.

These nerves control everything from muscle movement to pain sensation. When a crash damages these pathways, your body loses its ability to communicate properly between your brain and affected areas.

What Types of Nerve Damage Can Happen in a Charleston Car Crash?

After a car crash, victims can suffer from nerve damage in various ways and may have these types of injuries.

• Whiplash and Compression: The rapid back-and-forth motion of whiplash can damage the neck and spine. Extreme head movement during impact may compress nerve roots as they exit the spinal cord.
• Direct Impact: Blunt force from hitting the steering wheel, dashboard, or door frame can damage peripheral nerves in the arms, legs, or torso.
• Spinal Trauma: High-speed crashes may cause herniated discs or fractures that press against the spinal cord, damaging the main nerve pathway between the brain and body.
• Peripheral Nerve Injuries: These injuries affect nerves outside the brain and spinal cord, often in the arms and legs.
• Radiculopathy: Compression of nerve roots causes pain, numbness, and weakness that radiate along the affected nerve.
• Brachial Plexus Injuries: Damage to this nerve network can impair shoulder, arm, and hand function.
• Spinal Cord Damage: The most severe type of injury, potentially resulting in partial or complete paralysis.

How Long Does Nerve Damage Take To Heal After a Car Crash?

Nerve damage healing varies dramatically depending on the type and severity of your injury. Some minor nerve damage heals completely within weeks, while severe injuries may never fully recover. When you understand the legal timeline, you can make informed decisions about your Charleston car crash claim.

Factors that can affect your healing time may include:

• Severity of Initial Damage: Minor nerve injuries, such as stretching or bruising, often heal quickly. Pinched nerves usually improve once pressure is relieved, but torn nerves may require surgery and long-term rehabilitation.
• Location of Injury: Nerves in the arms and legs tend to heal faster than those near the brain and spine, which are more complex and slower to repair.
• Age and Overall Health: Younger individuals typically recover faster than older adults, especially those with pre-existing medical conditions. Factors like diabetes, smoking, and poor nutrition can slow nerve healing.
• Fast Initial Treatment: Immediate medical care can prevent further damage and promote faster healing. Delayed treatment may lead to slower recovery or permanent issues.

How Much Compensation Can I Recover for Nerve Damage After a South Carolina Car Crash?

Nerve damage compensation in South Carolina varies widely based on the severity of the injury, its impact on your life, and your ability to prove the other driver’s fault. Settlement amounts also depend on the type of injury and whether the victim faces long-term effects.

Medical expenses and treatment costs can consist of:

Emergency Care and Diagnostic Testing

Initial emergency room visits, CT scans, MRIs, and nerve conduction studies are typically costly. These diagnostic expenses form the foundation of your medical damage claims.

Specialist Treatment

Neurologists, orthopedic surgeons, and pain management specialists may charge hundreds of dollars per visit. Multiple consultations and ongoing monitoring can result in substantial costs over months or years of treatment.

The cost of doctor visits and treatment will vary based on everyone’s injury and the specific circumstances of their condition.

Surgical Procedures

Surgery for nerve decompression could become a financial burden for some car crash victims when they have to miss work to undergo procedures and need time to recover. Recovery and rehabilitation add significant additional expenses to surgical treatment.

Physical and Occupational Therapy

Rehabilitation sessions are billed per visit, and severe nerve damage often requires therapy multiple times a week for several months.

Medication and Equipment

Prescription nerve pain medications, muscle relaxants, and anti-inflammatory drugs cost hundreds of dollars monthly. Assistive devices, such as braces, wheelchairs, or home modification equipment, can add thousands more to your expenses.

Future Medical Costs

Chronic nerve damage often requires lifelong medical care. Life care planners estimate these future costs when victims have permanent disabilities.

Does South Carolina Car Insurance Cover Treatment for My Nerve Damage?

South Carolina car insurance coverage for nerve damage treatment depends on your policy, coverage limits, and crash details. While basic, state-required insurance provides some coverage, it often falls short of covering the high medical costs associated with nerve damage.

What Are South Carolina’s Insurance Requirements?

By law, the minimum insurance drivers must carry in South Carolina includes $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident in bodily injury liability coverage. This minimum coverage is typically insufficient for treating severe nerve damage, which can exceed $100,000 in the first year alone.

The state also requires $25,000 in property damage coverage, which only applies to vehicle repairs or other property losses, not medical bills.

South Carolina does not require drivers to carry Personal Injury Protection (PIP), which would cover medical expenses regardless of who is at fault. As a result, your ability to cover medical costs often depends on proving the other driver was at fault.

How Nerve Damage Injuries From a Car Crash Affect You Long Term

Nerve damage from car crashes creates permanent consequences that affect every aspect of your life. Unlike broken bones that heal completely, damaged nerves often leave lasting changes that impact your physical abilities, career, and daily activities for decades.

Physical Limitations

Nerve damage can create permanent physical limitations that affect basic daily activities. Simple tasks, such as buttoning shirts, gripping objects, or walking, become challenging or impossible. Chronic pain becomes constant, creating burning, stabbing, or electric sensations that resist traditional pain medications and often worsen at night.

Muscle weakness develops when nerves are unable to control muscle function properly. Over time, unused muscles waste away permanently when nerve damage prevents proper stimulation. Temperature sensitivity may affect many victims who lose their ability to regulate body temperature, making Charleston’s hot summers and cold winters extremely uncomfortable.

Career and Employment Impact

Nerve damage may prevent a return to previous employment. Nerve damage affects strength and coordination, rendering tasks you used to be able to do, nearly impossible. Even if you can return to work, your productivity may not be what it was before your car crash. Frequent medical appointments to help you manage your symptoms may impact your reliability at work, preventing advancement in your career. Many victims face early retirement, eliminating years of earning potential when they need resources for medical care.

Financial Consequences

Medical expenses continue throughout your lifetime, creating ongoing financial pressure. Regular specialist appointments, pain management treatments, and prescription medications cost thousands annually. Home modifications, including ramps and bathroom reconstruction, can cost thousands of dollars. Equipment like wheelchairs and mobility aids require regular replacement.

Transportation costs increase when nerve damage affects driving ability. Modified vehicles, medical transport, and rideshare services create ongoing expenses that accumulate over decades.

Emotional and Daily Life Changes

Many people with nerve damage struggle with depression as they face permanent limitations and ongoing pain. Anxiety often develops from the fear of falling or worsening symptoms. These emotional challenges, combined with physical pain, can strain relationships, making it difficult to take part in activities or fulfill family roles.

Daily tasks become increasingly complex. Personal care activities like bathing, dressing, and maintaining hygiene may require help. Household chores such as cooking and cleaning often become unmanageable. Even hobbies and recreational activities, once a source of joy and stress relief, may no longer be possible.

Chronic nerve pain also disrupts sleep, leading to persistent fatigue that affects nearly every part of daily life. Poor sleep can heighten pain sensitivity, cloud thinking, and trigger a cycle of declining physical and mental health.

Impact on Family

Family burden increases significantly when nerve damage requires ongoing assistance with daily activities and medical care. Spouses often become caregivers, affecting their careers and well-being. Financial stress affects entire families when income decreases while medical expenses increase.

Parenting becomes challenging when nerve damage limits the ability to care for children physically or participate in their activities. Role changes create emotional stress when you cannot fulfill traditional family responsibilities.

Evidence That Helps to Strengthen Your Nerve Damage Claim in South Carolina

Strong nerve damage claims require clear, detailed evidence that links your injuries to the crash and shows how they affect your life. Insurance companies often challenge these claims because symptoms can be subjective. It may not show up right away. However, proper evidence can turn a disputed claim into a strong case for fair compensation.

You can use the following types of evidence to build your case:

• Medical Evidence: You can use medical documentation such as emergency room records, diagnostic imaging like MRI scans, and specialist reports from neurologists and pain management.
• Proving Life Impact: If nerve damage has affected your life, gather documentation such as changes in work performance, statements from family members, and professional evaluations that estimate your lost earning capacity.
• Causation Proof: Evidence that can link your injuries to the crash is vital and may include police reports, witness statements, pre-crash medical records, and records that show how symptoms have worsened over time.
• Economic Evidence: If your nerve damage injuries caused reduced income, use evidence like medical expenses to show how it has become a financial burden. Other proof may be pay stubs, tax returns, and an employer statement.
• Daily Pain Documentation: Keep a daily pain diary to track your symptoms and how they affect your work, sleep, and everyday tasks. This record can help show how nerve damage impacts your life and support your injury claim.

How Insurance Companies May Push Back Against a Nerve Injury Claim

Insurance companies aggressively challenge nerve injury claims. These cases often involve substantial compensation amounts and subjective symptoms that are difficult to verify.

Your insurance company may question your injury through these tactics:

Pre-Existing Condition Arguments

Insurance adjusters search your medical history for any prior back pain, neck problems, or neurological symptoms to blame for current nerve damage. Even minor complaints from years earlier have become evidence that nerve damage existed before your car crash.

Alternative Causes

Some insurance companies may attempt to break the connection between your collision and injury. They may suggest that age, diabetes, vitamin deficiencies, or other conditions caused your nerve damage, rather than the crash.

Delayed Symptom Challenges

If you have nerve damage that appeared days or weeks after a crash, adjusters may argue that real crash injuries would cause immediate symptoms. They could even overlook medical damage, which suggests that nerve damage often exhibits delayed symptoms due to inflammation.

Insufficient Impact Claims

Your insurance company may argue that your car crash was not severe enough to cause nerve damage. Insurance companies analyze vehicle damage and crash forces to suggest that the collision could not have caused nerve injury.

Call Roden Law After Suffering Nerve Damage in a Charleston Car Accident

The complexity of nerve damage cases requires legal representation from attorneys who know how to gather the proper evidence and accurately assess the value of your claim. You need an attorney who will support you throughout the legal process.

At Roden Law, we have built a strong reputation in Charleston for handling complex injury cases. During a free consultation, we can review your options and help you understand your legal rights. Our attorneys are here to guide you in seeking fair compensation.

Time is critical. As evidence disappears, it becomes harder to build a strong case.

Call our firm today to learn more about your legal options: 1-844-RESULTS