Spinal cord and Brain injury

Well, you know the question of spinal cord injuries and brain injuries are very common and by that I mean, you know in some states, the brain injury advocacy associations are the same as the spinal cord or they are very closely aligned because the problems for the advocacy for individuals with these very traumatic injuries are very similar. In fact, sometimes the consequences are the same; you can have a very serious traumatic brain injury which totally affects the ability to walk. The nervous system is so destroyed by the degree of the brain injury that the person’s ability to walk and to move is totally affected and in some types of spinal cord injuries you lose movement either below the waist or entirely as a result of the spinal cord being severed. Of course, there are health issues that are related to people that have spinal cord injuries like you saw with Christopher Reeves that you don’t have with people who have brain injuries and their brain function and thinking issues, cognition issues, reasoning and such that brain injury victims have, that spinal cord injury victims don’t have but, as I said, there is common thread in both of these serious types of injuries because the advocacy that is required for both types of individuals is very similar. You are looking at life time care; you are looking at massive amounts of therapies that are needed over long period of time; you are looking at a long fight with the insurance industry to get what is needed for the victim and that’s important stuff. It’s very interesting too because in terms of lawyers point of view on the liability, you will see very similar fact patterns in both kinds of cases. For example, in our crash related cases with vehicles, roll-overs and roof crashed cases, you can see either spinal cord injuries or brain injuries and sometimes both and so, in the substance of the cases vehicle defect, for example, we get to see a lot of that unfortunately.