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This woman has been having hiccups for 12 years, and there seems no end to it

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The 31-year-old woman suffered a stroke during her pregnancy that left her hiccuping for over a decade.

Published: Wed 23 Oct 2019, 11:55 AM

Updated: Wed 23 Oct 2019, 2:24 PM

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A mother-of-two, from Lincoln, has been hiccuping for 12 years, due to a rare ailment that doctors claim triggered during her first pregnancy in 2008.
Lisa Graves, 31, suffered a stroke during her pregnancy that left her hiccuping for over a decade, doctors said. Graves, who has two daughters - Emily, 7, and Sophie, 11, said the hiccups are sometimes so loud that they sound like a dog's bark, reported Metro.co.uk.
The nail technician's husband Matthew, 35, and her daughters have got used to her hiccups but strangers are often taken aback. "I'm lucky - I own my salon and the majority of the girls that I work with have grown used to it. But I can still make them jump, and there's been plenty of mishaps when we're working on nails," Graves said.
Revealing she has tried every remedy under the sun to stop her hiccups, Graves said, "People making me jump, sucking on a lemon, literally everything. But nothing worked." Doctors who conducted extensive tests on Graves, including an MRI, claim Graves must have had a stroke during pregnancy and the hiccups were unusual side effect, reported Daily Mail.
Although chronic hiccups can be cured, Graves refuses the medication because of potential side effects. According to Graves, the involuntary contraction of her diaphragm now happens most when she's comfortable and relaxed. "Though, I've grown used to it. There was a time when I'd feel quite embarrassed about it, and would put off going out in public, but now, I just get on with it," Graves added. 
A similar case of hiccuping lasted 68 years for a man, from Anthon Iowa, Charles Osborne who started hiccuping while trying to weigh a hog before it was slaughtered in 1922. For first few decades Osborne hiccuped around 40 times a minute, which eventually slowed to 20 a minute. His hiccups only stopped when he died.



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