Understanding What Locked-In Syndrome Means Going Forward
Locked-in syndrome leaves a person almost entirely paralyzed. They are unable to speak or move most of their body, while their mind remains fully intact. They can typically still think, feel, and understand everything around them, often communicating only through eye movement or blinks. For families, this is one of the hardest parts to sit with: your loved one is still there, aware, present, and unable to communicate with you.
Because the body’s voluntary movement is lost almost entirely, the level of care required doesn’t taper off after a hospital stay; it becomes a permanent, daily reality. That typically includes:
- Round-the-clock nursing or attendant care
- Ventilator or respiratory support, in many cases
- Feeding tubes and nutritional management
- Communication devices and eye-tracking technology
- Physical, occupational, and speech therapy
- Skin and positioning care to prevent complications
- A wheelchair, hospital bed, and other adaptive equipment
What This Looks Like in Dollars, in New Hampshire
Care at this level is expensive everywhere, but New Hampshire families face costs that run notably above the national picture. New Hampshire ranks among the more expensive states in the country for several categories of long-term care.
| Type of Care | Estimated Cost in New Hampshire |
| Private duty nurse (hourly rate) | $195/hour |
| Private duty nurse (visit rate) | $200/visit |
| Long-term care facility, e.g., nursing home (semi-private room) | $146,913/year |
| Long-term care facility, e.g., nursing home (private room) | $161,330/year |
Source: Genworth
These figures reflect a single hour, visit, or year. For a person who may need this level of care for decades, the lifetime total can reach into the millions, and that’s before accounting for home modifications, transportation, and the income a family member often gives up to provide care themselves.
New Hampshire’s broader cost of living compounds this. The state consistently ranks among the more expensive in the country—around the 14th highest nationally per the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center’s cost-of-living index. For a family already managing a loved one’s care, that backdrop makes every other expense heavier.
Our Process
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Medical Review
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Legal Action
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Why Trust Our Team With Your Family’s Future
Handling a case like this isn’t just about representing you in a claim or a courtroom; it’s about becoming someone your family can lean on through a process that can otherwise feel overwhelming. That’s the role we try to fill when you enlist our help.
- We work directly with you. You’ll have real access to your attorney, not a rotating cast of case managers. We know that trust matters more here than in almost any other kind of case.
- We bring in medical expertise. Cases involving brainstem strokes and locked-in syndrome require physicians and specialists who can accurately reconstruct what happened and when. We invest in that review upfront.
- We think about the whole picture. A resolution, whether by settlement or verdict, needs to account for a lifetime of nursing care, equipment, home modifications, lost income, and the pain and disruption this has caused your family. We build cases with that full scope in mind, not just the immediate medical bills.
- We stay close with your family throughout. You shouldn’t have to chase updates. We aim to keep you informed at every stage and in plain language, without jargon.
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When Negligence May Be Part of the Story
Here’s something we say to every family upfront: not every devastating medical outcome is the result of malpractice. Strokes and brainstem injuries can happen despite excellent care. Part of our job is figuring out, honestly, whether that’s what happened here, and telling you plainly if it isn’t.
That said, there are patterns worth examining closely. Locked-in syndrome sometimes follows situations where:
- Stroke symptoms weren’t recognized or acted on quickly enough (delayed diagnosis).
- A stroke was misdiagnosed.
- A patient’s LIS was misdiagnosed. (Locked-in syndrome is sometimes mistaken for coma or a vegetative state, since a patient’s stillness can look, on the surface, like unconsciousness.)
- Treatment was delayed past the window where intervention could have limited the damage.
- A patient wasn’t transferred to a facility capable of providing advanced stroke care when they needed to be.
- A patient was discharged before their condition was fully understood.
- Family members noticed signs of awareness, such as eye movement, blinking, or tracking, that weren’t recognized or acted on by the care team.
Misdiagnosis is worth dwelling on for a moment, because it happens more often than people expect. A person with locked-in syndrome can appear completely unresponsive to someone unfamiliar with the condition, and it takes a careful, deliberate neurological evaluation to distinguish it from coma or a persistent vegetative state. In a number of documented cases, it has been family members who first noticed a blink that seemed intentional, or eyes that seemed to track a conversation.
If that sounds like something your family has experienced, it’s worth having a medical and legal team look at the record closely.
What a Review Actually Involves
If you reach out to us, we start by listening to what you experienced, what you noticed, and what still doesn’t add up. From there, we retrieve and review the medical records ourselves, and bring in independent physicians to assess the care your loved one received and determine whether it met the industry’s standard. We don’t build our understanding of the case around assumptions; we build it around the record and expert medical judgment. And if that review doesn’t point to negligence, we’ll tell you that directly. You deserve honesty, not a sales pitch.
How Location Can Affect the Review
Many locked-in syndrome cases trace back to a brainstem stroke, and stroke care is acutely time-sensitive. When a patient needs to be transferred from a local hospital to a facility equipped for advanced intervention, the time spent at that first hospital, known in the medical field as “door-in-door-out” time, matters enormously. National research published in JAMA has found that these transfer windows frequently exceed recommended benchmarks, and delays of even an hour can affect outcomes.
In New Hampshire, the median door-in-door-out (DIDO) times exceeded the nationwide guideline of less than 120 minutes. For acute ischemic stroke eligible for endovascular therapy, the median DIDO time was 126 to 131 minutes. For other acute ischemic stroke, the median DIDO time was 194 to 215 minutes.
What This Process Costs Your Family
We understand that money is likely already a source of stress. That’s why we work on a contingency basis:
- No upfront fees to begin a case
- Free, no-obligation consultations
- We’re only paid if we recover compensation for your family
- No pressure to decide quickly — take the time you need
We’re Here When You’re Ready to Get Answers
There’s no version of this that isn’t hard. Our hope is simply to make one part of it easier, to give you honest answers, a clear sense of your options, and a partner who will handle the legal and financial questions so you can focus on your family. When you’re ready, we’re a phone call away, with no pressure and no obligation.
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Newsome Law Is a step above all the rest. They are not some run-of-the-mill Firm. But rather an experienced Team of established excellence and success. As one of Newsome Law’s grateful clients, they always operated in the best interest of my family. Were always available to take my call , and were compassionate to the pain and needs of my family. Newsome Law is the right Firm for you to choose.
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