Hello, my name is Bennett Garfinkel and I’m coming to you today from the Maitland offices
of Garfinkel Schwartz. We’re a small law firm that deals exclusively in the Defense
Base Act and related areas of federal law.
I’m not a physician. I’m not an attorney. I do have some undergraduate training in neurobiology
and psychology and I was a field medic with Médecins Sans Frontières or Doctors Without
Borders.
I'm here today to talk to you briefly about traumatic brain injury and that's why I have
this skull here. Traumatic brain injury is defined as any concussive injury to the head
in which the brain, which is a very soft object, bounces back and forth against the skull.
If you can see here, the skull is not a very friendly looking place to a very soft brain.
Symptoms of traumatic brain injury can be disabling. They can include chronic migraine
headaches, sensitivity to light, deficits in spatial reasoning which means forgetting
where your keys are way too often or not understanding exactly how you got somewhere, problems with
memory, problems with emotion and social judgment.
And that's because the two most common areas in which traumatic brain injury actually occurs
in the brain is this front area of the brain called the orbital frontal cortex, which is
the executive part of the brain where all of the complex decision-making is performed.
And also in the temporal lobe where memory and emotion and kind of where one's place
in one's environment, like the space or forgetting one's keys, that's where this is processed.
And those are the two most common areas that traumatic brain injury occurs. Traumatic brain
injury can occur after a fall or especially after an IED blast.
A congressman from New Jersey named Bill Pascrell said traumatic brain injuries are actually
the signature injury of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So if you were a private military contractor and you were injured either through a fall
or an IED blast or some type of concussive injury to the head, we urge you to know your
rights and know that you're covered under a law called the Longshore and Harbor Workers'
Compensation Act and the Defense Base Act.
And that's the type of law that we practice here at Garfinkel Schwartz. I'm a medical
researcher and the legal assistant to lead counsel attorney Brian Wiklendt. So I look
at a lot of the medical records on the case and give the summary to Brian so he can work
on the legal aspects of your case.
We urge you to give us a call because a lot of times, insurance companies will deny any
individual seeking to get diagnosed for TBI. The insurance company will say, "No, you don't
get to go to a neurologist or a neuropsychologist."
And we'll actually advance those costs to you so you can get the proper diagnosis. And
that’s extremely helpful, not only to your case but to you as an individual suffering
from a neurological injury.
So again, I thank you for tuning in to the Garfinkel Schwartz YouTube page, talking to
you today about traumatic brain injury. My name’s Bennett Garfinkel. Again, not a physician,
not an attorney but the medical researcher here at Garfinkel Schwartz. Thank you very
much.