Thursday, January 03, 2008

HIC!


I have the hiccups. I have had the blasted hiccups over nine hours, with two less than 30 minute breaks.

Anna went to Googled various ways to stop hiccupping. I am trying two of the ways now… one is to drink something cold and another is drink something hot. I am drinking ice water and green tea in an alternating fashion.

When I was growing up, my father, the local witch doctor, had a unique way of ending my hiccups. He would set me down and look me in the eye and say something on the order of, “Okay, lets here the hiccups.” And I could not hiccup. It was over.

Anna also looked up reasons people have hiccups. One of the ways is to eat something very spicy. I think that is it. I had gumbo today for lunch, with a double dose of red pepper and hot sauce. It felt so good going down heating up my insides.

Earlier this year I had a nuclear stress test and the result was that I had a blockage in my heart area (don’t expect me to get more technical than that). A catherization was called for. The cardiologist went in to ream out or do whatever needed to be done.

He got his instruments inside my arteries or whatever and discovered the blockage was where my stent was inserted a few years ago. HOWEVER!!! The heart took it on itself to perform its own bypass. It weaved a series of blood vessels that leaped over the blocked area and landed in a safe place for the blood flow to continue its journey.

With my hiccupping Anna jokingly wondered if now the heart if doing some more repairs and making its own pacemaker.

I cracked up laughing – I thought that might rid my hiccups but it didn’t.

3 comments:

Jean Campbell said...

Oh, I'm sorry I didn't see this earlier!
My hiccup remedy is to eat a spoonful of sugar (you know, the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down, only this time it IS the medicine.)
Hiccups are caused by a spasm of the diaphragm, maybe that hot sauce irritated it.
In theory, the sugar being grainy, does something in there, I'm not sure what. You could use salt or sand, neither of which I'd advise instead.

Anonymous said...

I love your father's remedy. It's brilliant.

Eddie said...

Jean,

Sugar under the tongue is one of the remedies Anna found on Google.

Suzanne,

My Dad had a remedy for everything. One time as a toddler my legs became infected with risons (?) and he got some mucky dark brown walnut juice from the pod and rubbed it on my legs and presto! It cleared up.