Maine Injury Lawyer Blog
A Pastor from Lewiston is proving that it is possible to overcome insurmountable odds to thrive after a Bangor spinal cord injury – though that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have the experience of a Bangor personal injury attorney who will fight for fair compensation.
According to The Sun Journal, the pastor, who goes by the name “Wally,” is preparing to return to the pulpit of his Methodist Church following a recent car accident that left him quadriplegic, meaning he doesn’t have the use of his arms or legs. What he isn’t doing, however, is allowing the accident to also rob him of his voice – or his message.
The 74-year-old pastor was traveling on Route 119 early one morning in December when frost and mist contributed to a crash in which a sport utility vehicle collided with him head-on. In an eerie similarity, his wife had an almost identical accident nearly 13 years to the day as his own. In that case too, slippery roads caused another driver to slam into her head-on. It took her months to recover, and she still to this day must use a crutch to walk.
The couple has been married more than 40 years.
The pastor has been left with a broken neck, broken ribs, a bruised spinal cord and a broken wrist. He had to have pins and rods placed in his neck, and has spent the last several months in a Portland rehabilitation center before being transferred to another center in Lewiston, some 100 miles southwest of Bangor.
Since the wreck, he has gained slight movement in his limbs, but he can’t bear weight or lift with either. His wife described the entire ordeal as “quite a siege.”
Indeed, as with any spinal cord injury, it is not only the individual who suffers. Relatives are often left to cope with mounting medical expenses and the exhaustion of working out a care plan. It is also extremely difficult to watch someone you love struggle through or be unable to complete even basic tasks such as dressing themselves or brushing their teeth.
When the root cause of this is the negligence or recklessness of someone else, you deserve at the minimum to have these basic and necessary expenses covered. Any additional award received is never going to return life to the way it was, but it can help to ease the struggle.
According to the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, the top causes of spinal cord injuries are:
- Motor vehicle accidents (48 percent)
- Falls (21 percent)
- Sports Injuries (14 percent)
- Violence (15 percent)
- Other (2 percent)
Of these, about 45 percent result in loss of use of all four limbs.
The cost of such an injury is vast. You are looking at a minimum of 15 days in the hospital for acute or intensive care. Then you’re going to spend a minimum of 45 days in rehabilitation. Those two stays alone will run upward of $140,000. After that, the average first-year expense is $200,000. All of that is if you are lucky. People who are left with quadriplegia are going to rack up bills that total well over $400,000 annually.