Hiccups (1) - The cures, 1 to 7

I am half way through a fag when I hear my girlfriend hiccup in the next room. It starts a chain of thoughts in my head. I lay back on the sofa and inhale deeply; on the cigarette and the memories.

It was when I lived in Swansea, just finished uni, ‘95. I had hiccups that lasted 37 days. Continuous that is, non-stop hiccups, like a record stuck in a groove, though I doubt that there are many records that feature hiccups, if any. Certainly none I’ve heard.

They started one day at work for no apparent reason, well hiccups don’t need a reason; I was just scratching my arse in front of the photocopier and “hic” out it came. At first I didn’t think anything of it, hiccups come and go, but by day 37 the hiccups had effected a profound change on my life. I lost a job, a house, a girlfriend, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, I was threatened by smartly-dressed strangers on a beach, burgled and kicked up the arse.

I should stress that over the course of the 37 days I tried, unsuccessfully, every conceivable cure, I am not so careless of my health that I didn’t fight it.

The Cures

Cure 1. I drank water from the wrong side of the glass. My mum had taught me that and I’d never hiccupped for more than a few minutes at a time. But now my mum was dead and, for some reason, the cure no longer worked, so I tried the only other technique I knew.

Cure 2. I held my breath. Or at least I tried to hold my breath, but a hic forced it’s way out and made me breathe in again. These were clever hiccups, super-evolved hiccups that had learnt to survive primitive resistance.

Cure 2.a. My boss suggested a related trick - holding my breath whilst blocking my ears and squeezing my nose closed with my little fingers – a sort of breath-holding plus. I can see why squeezing your nose closed would help prevent unintended breathing, though I’ve never worked out the ear pressing part. Needless to say it didn’t work for me, as I’ve said, nothing did.

Cure 3. Frances at work suggested breathing in and out of a paper bag, so that I’d be breathing in my own exhaled air, which is rich in carbon dioxide. Hiccups can be caused by an imbalance of carbon dioxide in your bloodstream, so it makes sense, ensuring the right mixture of gases are flowing through your body. And it worked, for five minutes at least, but I soon started again, so it doesn’t really count. I repeated the trick several times, but it only worked that once.

Cure 4. Back at home Nina suggested that I lay on my back with my mouth wide open. I remember our first kiss occurring in similar circumstances, but this was a practical, scientific suggestion not a romantic one, a breathing exercise, and she made no effort to climb on top of me. When this didn’t work she made me lie on the couch with my head hanging over the side, another breathing technique I believe. Needless to say this didn’t work, and no, it didn’t develop into a sexual occurrence either.

Cure 5. My friend Tim is a Psychology graduate and he came up with a typical solution. “I’ll give you £1.00 if you hiccup again,” he said. This does work. I’ve seen it work on people who’ve been hiccupping for hours, they just stop as soon as they’re asked to hiccup, apparently actively thinking about hiccupping, trying to hiccup, can make you stop. But it didn’t work for me. And I never got the pound.

Cure 6. Ice cubes down the back of the neck. On the evening of the second day of hiccups I was round at Bill’s house playing a game of History of the World. We used to play such games about once a week, usually until late the next morning. The game was developing in unusual ways, with the Aztec empire the leading twentieth century superpower. It was during the Inca invasions of Tibet that Bill forced an ice-cube down my neck. This succeeded in scuppering my invasion plans, giving the Aztecs time to regroup, but had no effect on my hiccups.

Cure 7. Drinking a glass of water while someone holds your ears closed (squeezed ears again, I don’t understand why). Suggested by Ed via email. I wasn’t able to get anybody at work to volunteer to do this, as I suppose it sounds a bit weird. I did think about asking Lara, who I fancied, but I thought better of it (see no. 13). And when I got home that evening Nina wasn’t in the mood for squeezing my ears, or anything else for that matter, as she was revising for exams, which started the next week. Her finals in fact. So I don’t know whether this would have worked, but I suspect not. Ed doesn’t feature again in this story, Nina and Lara do.