Some conclusions

It seems to me that I'm thrashing about in the wilderness of not knowing what drugs do help and what drugs don't. 

• One thing seems to stand out: amitriptyline at a 50 mg dose does really seem to help me sleep comfortably. 
• Furthermore using voice recognition software as I am really is good for making me speak clearly. Its really good speech therapy!
• I remain suspicious of L-dopa: I don't think I've got the dose right. Reading around the literature makes me feel that the less dependent I am, the better. Increasing the dose seems to induce side-effects – dyskinesias -- after a year or so of  use.
• Pramipexole seems to be a little or no value in my case. Does that mean that all dopamine agonists are of no use in my case? What should I try others?
• Doctor Mclean has referred me to the pain clinic at the Bangor Hospital and I filled out a long questionnaire from them about what is troubling me. So this is an avenue which may become useful to me: learning to deal with my pain. The clinic is multidisciplinary and even includes an acupuncturist which I should be happy to try if it could help.It continues to be true that if I undertake hard physical work, I generally feel better rather than worse afterwards, but the aching muscles soon return.
• I find that lying flat on the floor in the Pilates rest position for 20 minutes is very resuscitating. And using the practice of whole-body scanning, picked up from meditation procedures, in which I systematically relax muscle groups is helpful. Trouble is within in a few seconds, many of the muscles re-tension. My guess is that much of the pain is due to major muscle groups pulling against each other (because of incorrect messages from the brain?) So it is not surprising that I feel as if I've climbed a mountain the day before. I haven't, of course, but my muscles think I have!