If you suffer a spinal cord injury in a car accident, you may experience symptoms for a long time after the crash. Sometimes these occur as a result of whiplash, which occurs when your head is suddenly jerked backward during a collision.
Some of those symptoms may include:
Mental trouble and fogginess
According to the Mayo Clinic, you may experience fogginess and confusion days or weeks later after a crash. Some people even pass out or lose consciousness with no warning. Headaches are fairly common, and frequent ones can seriously affect your ability to concentrate.
Numbness and lack of balance
A spinal cord injury can impair your ability to balance. You may also notice numbness in your extremities or stiffness in your neck, which could become more noticeable after the adrenaline from the initial accident has worn off. The shock of the initial injury often prevents people from noticing the severity of the trauma until later.
Pain and soreness
Intense back pain is a common symptom of a spinal cord injury, along with neck or head pain. You could have trouble breathing deeply, and loss of bowel or bladder control may increase over time.
Being unable to move your neck without intense irritation or soreness also indicates that trauma has happened. Spinal cord injuries are a serious health concern, especially for anyone recently involved in a car accident.
