You may or may not have listen about chronic hiccups. According to rarediseases.info.nih.gov, chronic hiccups are unintentional movements of the diaphragm followed by rapid closure of the vocal cords that persist for an extended period of time. Also, the exact underlying cause of chronic hiccups is unknown.

According to the web site orphan.net, chronic hiccups affect 1/100,000 individuals, and more males seem to be affected than females. The management and treatment of chronic hiccups focuses on identifying and treating the underlying cause, especially esophageal, but no specific treatments have proven efficacy in the absence of controlled studies.

Junior child life major, Monica Giles, started to have chronic hiccups since two years ago. She considers it something random that wasn’t even inherited.

“I’ve been to three different doctors,” Giles said. “I’ve taken seven different prescriptions, I’ve had an endoscopy done, and they were not able to find anything, so they don’t really know what causes it. It is basically, literally learning how to live with it.”

Giles says that she has normal hiccups, but now she happens to randomly hiccup, all the time any time.

For Giles, most of the challenges or difficulties are trying to explain to people about it, because they laugh when they hear “chronic hiccups.”

“Just the reaction of people, especially when I need to be in a quiet place,” Giles said. “Church and chapel are the worst because everyone is quiet and paying attention and I’m quiet as I can, but you just can’t really tell when they are coming. Is just being the disruption that everyone looks at or laughs at. My performance at school hasn’t really been affected by it,” Giles said. “But I don’t know about my classmates,” she said between laughs.

According to Giles there are also some benefits about this.

“I’ve come to realize that it just gives me an opportunity,” Giles said. “When I hiccup and people that don’t know about it ask, I just say that it is another breath that God gave me, and it just reminds me of it. It just makes me stop and think about this and it also makes laugh during the day.”