Colleen Kennedy, a retired medical assistant, was prepared for the annihilation of chemotherapy and radiation treatment for stage-three lung cancer. She hadn’t expected the hiccup fits that started about halfway through her first treatment round. They left her gasping for air and sent pain ricocheting through her already tender body. At times, they triggered her gag reflex and made her throw up. After they subsided, she felt tired, sore, breathless—as if she’d just finished a tough workout. They were, Kennedy, now 54, told me, “nothing compared to what we would consider normal hiccups at all.” They lasted for nearly a year.
Hiccups are one of the most common bodily experiences that humans (and, rats, squirrels, rabbits, cats, dogs, and horses) have; even fetuses get them. When we hiccup, the diaphragm involuntarily contracts and the vocal cords snap closed, producing the eponymous “hic” sound. These spasms usually disappear within a few minutes. Compared with cancer’s existential threat and the brutal reality of treating it, hiccups are innocuous, banal, and unserious. But these two experiences are, peculiarly, connected. As many as 40 percent of cancer patients deal with bouts of hiccups during their illness. For a smaller subset—about one in 10—those spells last for more than 48 hours.
Chronic hiccups interrupt almost every aspect of life. They disrupt concentration and conversations. They shake a person awake. Eating, drinking, and swallowing can feel like choking. Often, chest aches linger long after a hiccupping fit subsides.
And they are difficult to treat. Doctors have some off-label prescriptions at their disposal, but none has been rigorously tested—none has been proved to work any better than home remedies. Kennedy tried to eradicate her hiccups with deep, forceful inhales and by drinking water from the far rim of a glass; she also trained herself to exhale before drinking or eating to limit the amount of air she swallowed….
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