I know how you feel about feeling like the pharmacy regarding you like a drug addict. I'm at the point still where I am just trying out different things to see what works for each of my many symptoms, so every week I go in to the pharmacy with three new scripts and see the same girl. The last time I got Xanax and Percocet and she was like, ummmm....are you sure you don't need a consult from the pharmacist...okay, well, you can always give us a call.... But it's kind of comical.

Have you done the trigger point injections yet? They seem to be helping for me overall, but maybe the ones in my piriformis last time seem to be a little irritating.

Hope you get out of this flare soon.

Geez, those trigger points can hurt! I hope the weekend at your family's country place helps relieve some of the pain, A hard bed can difinitely make for an unhappy body. There is an excellent trigger point therapist in San Francisco. His office is across the street from a
B.A.R.T. station. Let me know if you want his name and number.

Sorry to hear about your flare up it does not take much I have just come out of one started at a concert I also wonder if the supplements help i also take magnesium I had trigger point acupunture yesterday really hurts today some really nasty points found sometimes it is really difficult to keep going take care

Thanks everyone. Yes, Katty, I would really like to have the name and number of the trigger point therapist in San Francisco. It would raise my mood if I felt that there was help available in the near future.

Chimerical, I sent you a message on your hug page with the information. Hope he is helpful.

I hope that your flare passes quickly. You've been through a lot. Now it's time for TLC and possibly a new treatment path. Good luck!

Thank you everyone. Even a week later I still am having these problems. I don't understand it. It was like a cascade effect. I started to deal with some trigger points and it was like I woke up all of them. They were more physically obvious than usual, making bumps on my skin that move when pushed. I have two humongous ones on the back of my neck. The hot hot bath I took last night seemed to help the most.

I am moving into a place with no bathtub, only a grotty shower--but good water pressure at least. I heard there were some communal type bath establishments near Berkeley, so I am researching that.

reading all of this I'm reminded of how much myofascial pain sucks. I hate that these rotten little trigger points really don't like being lonely and just love the company of other trigger points. For them it's a party, for you it's a nightmare. Be gentle with yourself, it will pass

Okay so I did find a great hot tub and massage place here in Berkeley. The massage was great, but it was the water jets that made the most difference. (I am going to start another thread on that.) But it only helped for the evening. The next day, today, I am in agony again. I have these narrow raised horizontal bars on my legs that are trigger points. Yes, they go sideways on my legs, even though the muscles in this area go up and down. Almost any pressure on the skin of my arms and legs hurts. I can find a painful area if I press in any part of my body.

It could still be the bed. I paid $260 for a memory foam mattress topper, but the underlying futon pad that serves as a mattress is so hard it does not seem to help much. At least I got a pharmacy to fill my pain med prescription. Whew.

I went back to Devin Starynal's website, following a link supplied by Katty. It seems there is new stuff there. Anyway, I found this bit where she wrote that when tight muscle that has served as a brace for many years start to soften and muscles can now move and stretch, there is an increase in pain. Sometimes it does feel like my muscles are looser all over my body. I hope this is why and this flare-up does not mean I am getting worse.