And then there's hiccups...

[lsanderson]

A Horrific Case of Hiccups, a Novel Treatment
By AMANDA SCHAFFER

Robert Smith has difficulty talking for very long. He also has trouble sleeping and eating, and he has lost more than 50 pounds in the last three years. He has even considered taking his life.

The source of his misery? It sounds like a biblical curse in a Mel Brooks movie.

"I hiccup every day and every night, with 5 or 10 minutes of relief at most," said Mr. Smith, 53, a maintenance worker in Montgomery, Ala.

Each hiccup involves a sharp intake of breath, accompanied by a sudden closing and opening of the vocal cords, producing the "hic" sound.

Mr. Smith is one of the rare people who suffer from chronic hiccups, and as sometimes happens in such cases, he does not know what caused them.

For most people, hiccups are set off by eating too fast or by swallowing air, and they tend to go away on their own.

He has tried holding his breath, drinking ice water and making himself vomit, all folk remedies for the spasms. He has trooped from gastroenterologists to internists to neurologists, because persistent hiccups can reflect underlying problems like reflux disease, metabolic abnormalities or brain disorders.

Mr. Smith has tried so many drugs that "their names all blur together," he said.

Nothing has done much good.

Comments

[mia-mcdavid.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but then what's the treatment? Did it work?

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

Listening to Alito's confirmation hearings might have scared him into a cure.

They

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

They put in a vagus nerve stimulator that appears to be working. "Recently, Mr. Smith decided to try a new approach. Dr. Bryan R. Payne, a neurosurgeon at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, implanted in Mr. Smith's upper chest a device that generates electrical pulses, a vagus nerve stimulator."

Re: They

[mia-mcdavid.livejournal.com]

Thank you.