A child who suffers a spinal cord injury can often face considerable obstacles throughout life. The child’s parents and other family members also face some lifestyle adjustments. These adjustments and obstacles can greatly affect the child and all the family members.
When the spinal cord injury is new, the child will likely be in a medical facility. Oftentimes, the child will move from a hospital into a rehabilitation center. Once the child is able to leave the rehabilitation center, the challenge of caring for the child at home begins.
In some cases, caring for a child with a spinal cord injury is something that the parents work to do on their own. When the child has complex medical needs, the parents might have to employ a nurse to help care for the child. That means that there is another person who is always in the home or who is in the home a lot. In a sense, that person becomes like another member of the family, albeit a paid family member.
A family who needs to employ a nurse often has to make sacrifices to be able to afford the nurse’s pay. Add that cost to the medical bills, physical therapy bills, assistive devices costs and other similar expenses, and it is easy to see why some parents choose to seek compensation for their child’s injury.
Any parent who feels he or she has a claim for their child’s spinal cord injury should seek to determine how to handle filing the claim. Getting answers to your questions now can help you feel less stressed later.
Source: Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, “‘We Don’t Sleep Much’: The All-Encompassing Reality of Caregiving for Children with Paralysis,” accessed Oct. 20, 2015
