I haven't been here for serveral months and hope everyone is doing well.

I woke up with a terrible flare 2.5 weeks ago. It was new to me in that there was a very painful pull from my armpit to my little fingers and another one from my deltoid? to my little fingers on the other side of my same arm. Also there was a more usual pain in my neck and pull from under my ear to the clavicle and the usual stabbing shoulder blade pain. It hurt to breathe more than a shallow breath and activities like sitting or even sleeping made it worse. ONly a little supported walking helped. This pain was a constant 8-9 at first and now thankfully is more intermittent and less severe.

My question is about dystonia. I saw Oprah today and there was a wmn on the show along w/Michael J Fox who suffers from dystonia. Her body was severely pulled to one side. Her pain seemed similar to that kind of muscle pain I get in that seems like a constant tugging once it gets started. I know that w/TOS we get hypertrophic muscles. Is dystonia related to the usual TOS pains? I remember a lot of talk about focal dystonia when the famous pianist had releif after many yrs of suffering but not much since then. The wmn on Oprah was getting quarterly Botox at USC.

btw-my PT feels that it's a case of fascial restriction that was caused by a fallout of getting my spine in better alignment, causing the shortened fascia to pull for a few weeks until new cells can create more length in the fascial train. The flare does seems to be lessening on it's own but I've never had that severe pull from the armpit before and am wondering if there's something I can do. I've completed my PT for awhile due to an upcoming surgery and I had a new MRI of my Cspine yesterday to make sure it's not radiculopathy (which I did have some years back prior to C-spine surgery - and it doesn't feel the same). The docs here in my town don't know much about TOS so I'm looking for some input from you smart folks here. My goal is to be able to sit and lie w/o flare for surgery and recovery. I hope to be w/o flare or I will postpone surgery.

thanks for your suggestions.