A British singer has had hiccups for 15 months.
Christopher Sands - who suffers every day, sometimes every two seconds for up to 12 hours at a time - will now undergo an operation to help cure him.
The guitarist and professional backing singer believes he must have hiccuped 10 million times since September 2006.
He said: "They might stop for a bit and I can have a kip. But I've lost count of the sleepless nights and I can never eat enough to keep my energy up.
"I've tried everything to stop them. I must have drunk water a hundred different ways.
"Sometimes if I hunch into a ball I can hold them off for a bit, but it freaks people out." Doctors have diagnosed a faulty stomach valve and will operate to create a new one.