Acupuncture Stories: Hiccups for More Than Ten Years

Perry had been diagnosed with TB of the spine many years ago, albeit not before severe damage was done. His spine he joked was like “Swiss cheese”. Part of the pain management was a Fentanyl patch which still allowed serious breakthrough pain every second day. When Perry was brought in for acupuncture by his wife, I noticed that he appeared to have the hiccups. It turned out that he had been dealing with that side effect of the Fentanyl for over ten years. It was causing continual spasm (myclonus of the diaphragm) . Perry said kids would try to scare the hiccups out of him!

I felt there must be an answer to this and encouraged him to come once a week. Primarily our goal was to help with his breakthrough pain. He came for just over two months, nine or ten times and one day came in grinning broadly saying something was missing... His hiccuping had quit during the night and he awoke free of those wracking spasms for the first time in ten years! Two years later they had not returned.

His back pain was also less severe, but we never did manage to alleviate it, given the damage done to the spine.

With the cessation of the myoclonus, Perry also began to swallow properly again, dysphagia being something else that he had suffered with for so long. The side effect acupuncture is to subtly and gently restore the body's self healing powers.