Almost half a million burn injuries required medical treatment in the United States in 2013. These injuries come not only from direct contact with a flame or hot material like stoves and coffee, but from numerous kinds of chemicals, electric currents, and radiation. Anything that creates enough heat damages the structural integrity of human tissue.
Not Just Another Injury
Burns are unique in the kinds of damage they cause to people, the kinds of long-term consequences that burn victims experience and the kind of care required to treat them. Serious burns are so different from other injuries, in fact, that victims are automatically transferred from normal medical facilities to “burn centers” at which the entire facility focuses on burns, or to “burn units” of general treatment centers.
It takes medical staff with great experience to effectively treat burns and rehabilitate burn patients. And it takes legal staff with great experience in handling lawsuits based on burn injuries to ensure that the victims get the compensation they need and deserve. The attorneys at Wettermark & Keith, LLC, have that experience. We understand the unique nature of burns and what the future can hold for the victims of serious burns.
Consequences of Burn Injuries
For far too many burn victims, the future consequences include:
- Pain
- Enduring memories of the burn incident that forces them to relive it again and again
- Scars in very visible places
- Scars that severely limit physical function
As a result, burn victims often undergo serious personality and emotional changes. It’s not unusual for victims of serious burns to develop full-blown Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and, eventually, to come to think of their lives as having two totally different periods: before the burn and after the burn.
In short, burn injuries can diminish every aspect of your life:
- Employment
- Friendships
- Social activity
- Marriage and parenthood
- Education
If that is the situation that you or someone you love is facing, money alone will never make up for your injuries, but compensation is crucial to pay for the current and future care that will be required, and to offset at least some of the personal and social losses involved. With combined experience of 30 years, the team at Wettermark & Keith, LLC, has a long and successful history of obtaining that compensation.
Scarring
How scarring affects people varies quite a bit, depending on several circumstances and traits of the victim, including:
- Visibility of the scar—this affects victims’ self-esteem, confidence, employment prospects, and many other things
- Whether the scar affects movement—scars over joints, for example, won’t stretch the same as normal skin, causing restrictions in range of motion and, possibly, discomfort
- The gender of the victim—our society undeniably places more emphasis on appearance when it comes to females; scars (even minor ones) can be vocationally, psychologically and socially devastating
- The age of the victim—younger victims who have yet to fully develop their personalities and social skills often become withdrawn, uncertain, angry
The psychological and emotional impact on children, in particular, often starts a downward spiral in which self-consciousness and anxiety cause social, educational and other failures. In turn, those failures cause children to withdraw from further attempts at fitting in to life, and that increases their anger and frustration. That simply leads to more failures and the spiral continues downward.
Contact Our Huntsville Burn Injury Lawyers
Understanding these factors allows the attorneys at the Huntsville, Alabama law firm of Wettermark & Keith, LLC, to help insurance companies, juries, and judges to understand what’s at stake. We carefully gather the evidence to make your case medically and legally clear. Call us today and start the healing process. We front all the work and expenses, and you only pay us at the resolution of your case if we win money for you.
