Someone please help me figure out whether I should look into ACNES
Context: I have a connective tissue disorder, developed bilateral frozen shoulder, HLA-B27+, bilateral tennis and golfers elbow, autoimmune has been fully ruled out at least for now. I used to do bodybuilding as a hobby and heavily trained my abs without problem.
I had occasional extreme tearing/pulling pain episodes going from my belly button down that lasted 24h. The pain only occurred whenever I would stand up straight or stretch out my abdomen. This would also happen when urinating standing up straight. After urination(when my bladder was empty), I couldn’t stand up straight anymore until my bladder filled again. This used to be only once every 2 months since I was 8. This became drastically worse a year ago and I developed a severe burning/allodynia feeling in 10x7cm area close to my belly button. This was a medical mystery. I first had a small umbilical hernia repaired which made the burning worse. Eventually the pulling turned out to be a rare thing related to Urachal remnants connecting my belly button and my bladder. I had this surgically removed robotically 5 months ago with part of my bladder. That fixed the pulling episodes during urination. However the burning that appeared only since a year ago never got fixed. I went to PT who managed to worsen my burning pain by having me do easy/simple lower body twists whilst laying flat on my back on the ground. The burning pain now flares up severely every week. It reacts to movement like using my abs and my clothes touching it. There is a spot of about 2ish centimeters where the pain is sharp. It is not close to any of my surgical scars. It is severely disabling and I cannot live like this anymore. If I don’t get rid of this I will probably end up offing myself. It is that severe. 100mg of Lyrica did nothing, xylocaine cream barely does anything, ibuprofen/Tylenol does ZERO. Since it got worse, my abdominal muscles have been twitching in that area where it burns. The twitching is very mild and painless, just uncomfortable. Does this sound like ACNES on top of my other issue?
Posted Sep 1, 2026, 4:34 PM UTC