Unfortunately, helmets are not capable of preventing all head injuries. In fact, head injuries are still the third-most common crash injuries to both helmeted and unhelmeted riders.
The violent shaking of your head in a collision can jostle and jolt your brain, producing brain bleed symptoms. When the blood vessels in the brain tear, brain cells do not receive the oxygen vital to their functions. Moreover, blood will collect inside the skull and squeeze the brain. Outcomes may include permanent brain damage, a coma, and even death.
Identifying Brain Bleed Symptoms
You can suffer a traumatic brain injury and not recognize it for hours or even weeks after the fact. Changes in the brain sometimes take time to develop, and symptoms may only appear once those changes are severe enough to impair the brain’s functions.
With that in mind, the following eight symptoms can signify a brain injury resulting from a motorcycle crash:
1. Severe Headaches
Pain is your body’s way of telling you that something is wrong. Specifically, it is the process of your nervous system’s pain receptors being activated when cells get damaged. The problem is that bleeding in the brain will not necessarily trigger these pain receptors directly.
Be that as it may, the increasing pressure on the brain from leaking blood can trigger them, causing consistently intense headaches. These might be localized to a specific region of your head or cover it in its entirety, making it feel as though your skull is being compressed.
2. Nausea and Vomiting
Your inner ear is home to the cochlea, a spiral tube that provides feedback about your body’s orientation and motion. Your brain uses information gathered by the cochlea to control your balance. But when the portion of your brain that connects to the ears is damaged, you may experience the following symptoms:
- Loss of balance
- Clumsiness
- Nausea and vomiting
- Ringing in the ears
- After a motorcycle accident that damages your brain’s blood vessels, you may experience some or all of these symptoms in greater effect.
3. Confusion or Disorientation
The brain’s information-processing functions are some of its most sensitive. Even a minor bump on the head might leave you dazed for a moment. As such, when blood collects in your brain, you may experience more severe cognitive impairments, such as difficulty concentrating, foggy thinking, and even memory loss.
4. Vision Changes
Following a serious motorcycle accident, you may experience a variety of changes to your eyesight, such as:
- Seeing stars
- Blurred vision
- Tunnel vision
- Blindness
You could experience these symptoms even if your accident did not directly damage your eyes, as the pressure of blood on your brain can compress the visual cortex, impairing its ability to process visual information.
5. Weak or Numb Limbs
Your brain is responsible for sending and receiving signals. It transmits signals that allow you to move your limbs while also processing signals from nerve endings in your limbs, thereby providing you with your sense of touch. When pressure in your skull caused by a brain bleed affects the section dedicated to moving your limbs, you may experience weakness. And if it affects the region that processes touch, your limbs may feel numb.
6. Loss of Consciousness
You may experience unconsciousness when a severe injury causes your brain’s higher functions to shut down. Sometimes, the brain can recover on its own and restore consciousness. But in other cases, the shutdown continues, leading to coma or death.
7. Seizures
Seizures typically represent a short circuit in the brain that triggers a burst of abnormal activity. It usually signifies a brain condition or injury, such as a brain bleed.
8. Speech Difficulties
Since speech requires a combination of cognitive and motor signals, it can be affected when the brain suffers damage. As such, one last set of common brain bleed symptoms may include slurred speech, difficulty finding the right words, or even the loss of speech altogether.
Seeking Compensation for Your Injuries After a Motorcycle Accident
Texas law allows you to seek compensation for both economic and non-economic losses resulting from your injuries.
Economic losses encompass the injury’s impact on your finances. Intracranial bleeding can cause significant economic losses, seeing as it requires expensive medical care and often produces permanent injuries.
Non-economic losses attempt to capture the diminishment in your quality of life caused by your brain injury. These losses can be significant since permanent brain damage can cause cognitive and physical impairments that make your life more difficult.
FAQ
Is Bleeding in the Brain Fatal?
Intracranial bleeding can cause death. It may also permanently damage the brain or cause the victim to become comatose. In some cases, doctors can relieve the pressure on the brain by draining fluid from the skull. However, brain cells do not regenerate, so any sustained pressure damage will be permanent.
How Much Can I Seek for Permanent Brain Damage?
Your compensation for brain damage will depend on many factors, such as:
- Past and future medical costs
- The income you lost
- Whether you suffered permanent disabilities
Generally, victims with severe injuries can pursue more compensation than those with minor injuries.
Speak to a Brain Injury Attorney Today
Brain injuries can leave you with mountains of bills for medical care and other losses while impairing your ability to work. Contact Ramsey Law Group for a free consultation to discuss the brain injury you or your loved one suffered and the compensation we can seek for it.