She would use a walker. Crutches and canes will unbalance you long term and cause more problems than help.
This indicates brain involvement, but most everything else sounds like peripheral nerve damage. I'm curious how an electrical injury caused non-permanent brain injury... That's the biggest issue I see. Mood changes can just be triggered by stressful events (like a major injury), so it could be that she doesn't actually have any brain damage. If an electrical current passed through her brain... those problems wouldn't just go away with therapy. They could get better, but to be honest, I hardly ever see that happen. Brain injury is HORRIBLE. As a healthcare provider it is a huge ethical dilemma for me whether I tell this to patients or not, because I don't want them to lose hope or think therapy can't help. However, personality, mood, and impulse changes are really, really hard to treat and will almost always affect someone long term. Therapy can help lessen the effects, but a lot of people with brain injuries can't even hold a job (even simple ones can be difficult, because they just can't manage time, money, or responsibilities well). Of course, some brain injuries are minor and might not affect someone long term, but... it's just really scary to me, because I see how it totally changes people's lives. They may "look" normal and everyone around them may be asking "why can't you do this simple thing that literally everyone does", but they just can't.
Speech is not in the same part of the nervous system as the arms and legs.
When writing any nerve damage (whether peripheral or central), consider where the "lesions" are. These are the areas that were hit by electricity during the initial injury.
- Central nerve damage includes the brain and spine. It is only minimally recoverable, because brain cells do not regrow, but axons do. Some areas of the brain are "plastic", meaning new axons can adapt to take over lost functions in the brain, but this is not the case in the spinal cord. If the lesion to the spinal cord is minor or incomplete (like if you have nerve compression), it can cause weakness like what you described and become better with physical therapy or surgical correction, but if it is complete, it will cause paralysis or loss of sensation or both in everything below the level of the injury. Some newer therapies focus on regrowing axons below the level of injury to take over motor functions lost by the dead cells, but they have mixed results and are not widespread.
- Peripheral nerve damage has significantly better outcomes in general. It will cause that weakness you described, but can improve significantly with physical therapy. It also can cause chronic pain. Peripheral damage refers to nerves outside the spinal cord and brain. So if electricity passed through your arm or foot, for example, you could have peripheral nerve damage to that specific location.
This makes me curious. I have talked about electrical injuries before, but just so we are all on the same page, electricity doesn't follow the pathways of the brain or nerves preferentially. The type of "electricity" that our nerves work by is very different from the type of electricity we use for power. The later is a flow of free electrons down the path of least resistance and the former is caused by the flow of sodium and potassium ions through highly regulated channels in our cell membranes. Very different and not at all related. Not saying you can't have nerve damage from electrical injuries, just saying it's not like your nervous system is receiving a "shock" when electricity passes through it. Electrical injuries are not primarily linked to nerve injuries, it's just that nerves are the tissues that won't recover as easily long term. So, your patient would have muscle, skin, and even bone or organ damage in addition to nerve damage, but these could all be recovered from within a few years. Nerve damage is just the stuff that will last.
Instead, think about the path the electricity followed specifically. It doesn't really matter where, just pick and go with it. I've attached images of the homunculus of the brain (motor and sensory cortex), brain regions by function, major peripheral nerves including the cranial nerves, and the spinal cord dermatomes so you can better determine what symptoms she might have based on where the lesions are.
So, one by one:
1. Grip strength from most severe to least severe: injury to motor cortex of wrist, fingers, and thumb; injury to C7 and C8 spinal cord region; or injury to median and ulnar nerves.
2. Trouble bending over from most severe to least severe: injury to motor cortex of trunk, T1-12 spinal cord regions; or cutaneous branches on abdomen and back.
3. Balance problems again from most severe to least: cerebellum, vestibulocochlear nerve damage, all the above trunk injuries from #2, or leg injuries as described next.
4. Leg weakness: the most medial region of the motor homunculus (I honestly don't see how this could happen without significant brain injury), damage to L1-S2 nerve regions, or a whole host of peripheral nerves I won't list.
5. Speech difficulties: language center of the temporal lobe of the brain, facial cranial nerve, hypoglossal cranial nerve, glossopharyngeal cranial nerve, or trigeminal cranial nerve. Notice all of these injuries are located in the brain or very close to it. These are very high risk zones.
6. Impulse control and mood: frontal lobe of brain
I hope this helps you realize that the patient you described has very diffuse and sporadic nerve damage. I think it could happen, but I think it would be more accurate to focus on a particular area of damage rather than try to catch everything.
Hope this helps!