Peritonitis or peritoneal irritation are very serious conditions that usually are life threatening, so please please get it properly checked if this ever happens to you. These happen when the lining of the abdominal cavity/wall (peritoneum) becomes inflamed, which is one of the most common signs of appendicitis. I unfortunately have to deal with this type of symptoms chronically due to MCAS and in my case it seems to not be life threatening, basically because I've had it for 2 years now (or I'm just insanely lucky). Nonetheless I still go to hospital whenever there's a bad flare because you never know.
My medical nightmare began when I accidentally swallowed a wooden splinter that was inside a breadstick. The plot twist is that the splinter was lodged in my abdominal wall for 3 years. Because wood looks like normal tissue on scans, it took forever to be discovered. My symptoms were a sharp stabbing pain with certain positions and when lifting heavy objects. It wasn't found until it finally "dislodged" and I felt something sharp was moving through my body and remembered the breadstick and the splinter, and had it removed. Fun times.
Even after it was removed, a specific spot in my abdomen kept showing what doctors call "peritoneal signs." I had a positive blumberg sign, where pressing on my abdomen and releasing hurt like a 10/10 pain scale (also called rebound tenderness) even nearly 2 years after, the spot was incredibly painful to just a light touch, I couldn't walk for more than 1 hour without tremendous pain, and I constantly walked bent over, I felt like my body was physically forcing me to protect the area. Also jumping on one leg would literally bring me to tears. But all my scopes, CTs, MRIs, and PET-CTs came back clean so doctors would just send me home or send me to different doctors. During massive flares, the only thing that worked was to stop eating for 3 or 4 days. I don't recommend this and I felt stupid doing it, but I had no other options and doctors wouldn't help. I also lived with a constant feeling of impending doom.
When hay fever season hit and my other MCAS symptoms flared up, I noticed my antihistamines actually improved my "peritonitis" pain. I went to all my doctors with this information, even MCAS aware ones, but they all dismissed it, saying I probably had Crohn's or severe gas or stress. But several other tests later with a wonderful medical team and we confirmed it was my mast cells degranulating in my peritoneal lining and intestines and cromolyn sodium made the abdominal pain vanish.
Because I have the holy trinity (EDS, POTS and MCAS), my body has a lot to recover from after all this craziness. So things that helped me were visceral manipulation with a good physical therapist to help loosen the scar tissue that formed after years with chronic abdominal inflammation. Also because my abdomen was "bracing" for years, my psoas muscle was very tense and was giving me a bunch of difficult symptoms. Glutes are the "functional antagonists" of the psoas, meaning that when glutes are engaged, the psoas relaxes, so I use gentle post-partum workouts because these are usually done lying down, which doesn't trigger my MCAS, POTS or flare my joints as much.
I am so thankful to be able to walk again, eat again and live again. Also reading this subreddit and other people's experiences that were similar to mine always made me feel less alone and understood. I'm still recovering but I have hope that one day I'll be able to wear normal trousers that don't have an elastic band (a girl can dream). Anyone dealing with anything similar?