Arachnoiditis

When a brain aneurysm ruptures, blood mixes with the cerebrospinal fluid.  Your brain doesn't like that.  Neither do your nerves.  That nice, clean fluid is supposed to protect your nervous system, and blood pollutes it.  This can bring on arachnoiditis.

After my little aneurysm problem, I had debilitating pain in my lower back and my legs.  Once the doctors figured out the cause of my pain, they knew that the best solution was for the blood to be re-absorbed by the body so that it would be away from the nerves.  That meant my getting up to sit and even walk.  It also meant lots of pain meds to make it possible for me to sit or stand. 

Thinking about how arnica gel had helped so much in healing my bruises (where blood leaked and has to be re-absorbed) I asked my family to bring arnica to the hospital.  I can't say for sure that it helped.  But I sure felt better when I used it on the sore spots.  Of course, the improvement may have been caused by the doctors' treatments, or time, or a combination of many things. 

With some recent flare-ups, I'm trying arnica again.  I doubt it will help.  It doesn't seem reasonable to try, as pain now is residual nerve pain, and not pain from blood currently polluting my CSF.  But what would it hurt?