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I wrote earlier about my mother having the same head and neck pain as Jack. I am going to go ahead and give the details of her medications and symptoms. She was diagnosed 14 years ago at age 43. She now takes 80 mg Sinemet in liquid form every two hours starting at 7am through 9pm . At 9:30pm she takes 10mg of Elavil. At 10pm she takes 15mg of Restoril and then goes to bed. The Restoril has been very good at relaxing her muscles so that she can sleep through the night. About once per week she wakes up at around midnight and my father has to give her another Restoril pill and she sleeps until 6am or 6:30am. My mother use to weigh a healthy 134 pounds. Protein greatly interferes with her Sinemet. Once she has taken her Sinemet she waits (usually about 15-20 minutes) until she feels the Sinemet working and then eats a very small meal. She avoids meat, spicy foods, and tomato saucy foods. Her 7am breakfast consists of one plain bagel and a cup of coffee. Her 9am snack is a bowl of oatmeal or cream of wheat. Her 11am lunch is usually two toasts with margarine. Her 1pm snack is a banana. Her 3pm snack is nothing. Her 5pm dinner is 1/2 cup of rice with 1/2 cup of green beans or other vegetable. Unfortunately, any food still in her digestive system whether it be of high-protein or low-protein interferes with Sinemet. Not surprisingly she lost weight and was weighing 91 pounds. She has gained about 2 pounds in the last month because she now eats a second dinner with a piece of yummy cake at 9:45pm. That last late meal does not seem to interfere with her sleep. It is extremely rare for my mother's "time on's" to link. If she links two times in a row, then the rigidity and pain come back at an unpredictable time later to seek its revenge. The symptoms are horrendous. She prefers to deal with the "time off" every two hours when she can expect them. During this time Her "time on" averages about 75 minutes at a time (that means her time off averages about 45 minutes.) She, also, cannot take more Sinemet because the dyskenesia becomes worse. Besides the exploding head and neck symptoms she experiences internal tremor (she describes it like an earthquake or tumbling grapefruits inside her body), severe rigidity, painful dystonia, blurred vision, bradykinesia, mental confusion, etc. She is scheduled for a pallidotomy this month. Teresa