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If it had been cancer, there would have been chemotherapy or radiation for Bill Holloway of Covington. A badly broken bone could have been pinned and set. But Holloway has a rare case of incurable hiccups and, for the past six years, the 84-year-old man has had to nearly set aside his life to hiccup.

Doctors are baffled. National news organizations and afternoon talk shows haven't called -- yet. But given the television coverage of the plight of a Florida girl with persistent hiccups, the chieftains of news might find Holloway's story as compelling as the little girl's and, perhaps, at least equally poignant.

The jerk, jerk, jerk of the malady has made his body twitch since he ate a bowl of Campbell's Chunky Soup in December 2000, he says. In spite of trying all the usual home remedies and undergoing medical workups and therapies, he's been challenged by the problem for some 86 months, versus 37 days for the Florida girl, whose hiccups stopped Wednesday.

The hiccups -- involuntary spasms of the diaphragm -- have stopped only once for more than a couple of days.

The case is "extraordinarily rare," said Dr. Juris Simanis, a Covington internist who is caring for Holloway. "I've been in practice 32 years and this is the first patient I've seen with [hiccups] persistent this long."

Though coming on late in life, at 78, hiccups brought Holloway significant changes. They cut short his career as a gospel singer and sidelined the paper-mill retiree from teaching Sunday school at Pine Street Baptist Church, where he is a deacon. They interrupt meals, speech, reading and sleep.

"Look how long I've had these things!" he exclaimed. "They go away and they come right back. But I have the strength to bear them. It makes me know one thing -- that God is with me."

Here's an ailment addressed by hundreds of home remedies and a fair amount of mainstream clinical medicine, and Holloway can't find anything that works. And yet, otherwise, he is unremarkable medically, facing some of the typical chronic diseases of age.

Cases like this are perhaps why the Guinness World Records program exists, but the hiccupping record belongs to the late Charles Osborne, an Iowa hog farmer who hiccuped for 68 years.

The Virginia vanity license plate "HICCUP" is already taken by someone else.

"He's definitely earned that," said his daughter, Joihelene Holloway, of Chattanooga, Tenn.

Holloway has led a full life. He was born in 1922, one of 12 children, and raised in Covington, a city of 6,300 that is home to a MeadWestvaco Corp. paper mill. From a family of gospel singers, he sang early in life. In the first of many kudos, he won a bag of 75 silver dollars for a contest performance with his brothers and another boy. As a teen, he played shortstop for about two years in the Negro National League and later knew such stars as Hank Aaron and Satchel Paige. A great nephew, Shawon Dunston, played for the Chicago Cubs and the San Francisco Giants of Major League Baseball from 1985 to 2002.

As a young man, Holloway went to work in the mill. Called up by a military draft, he took a break from working to spend four years in the service. He earned college credits and various decorations that are displayed in a frame in his den.

"I gave basic training to 20,000 black troops during World War II," Holloway, a staff sergeant, said.

After his service, he met and married his wife, Helen, on Christmas Day of 1946.

He returned to Westvaco and spent years as a wood buyer, procuring wood for the paper goods produced there. "I wrote checks for $30 million a year for Westvaco," he said.

He retired in 1992 after 52 years with the company. He and his wife, married 60 years, have two grown children.

In his middle years, at about age 45, Holloway developed a back condition during which persistent hiccups were a problem. But they went away after a few weeks and were not an issue until the Christmas 2000 bowl of soup.

And "they" have been nearly non-stop since, the couple said, using familiar pronouns that almost personify the condition that is an unwelcome visitor to their otherwise quiet, comfortable lives on Mercer Avenue with its view of the mill.

According to the Holloways, the hiccups vary in force from "vicious" to "calmed down."

On a recent day, they were mostly calmed down.

"See him jerking," his wife said. "It shakes him within."

He hiccupped about every three seconds at one point. At other times, the hiccups were spaced farther apart.

During sleep, when Holloway hiccups, it jostles his wife. As she tells it: "I am moving in the bed. I need one of those [motion-isolating] mattresses where I'm on this side and he's on this side."

Physically, he's grown trimmer because it is hard for him to keep down food. He eats such items as mashed potatoes and cream sauce on toast prepared by his wife and caretaker. She is a former cardiopulmonary technician who once used CPR to revive her husband when he passed out in their den.

"They don't make 'em no better," he said of her.

One day, Helen Holloway dropped her utensil at the kitchen table across from her husband while the two were eating breakfast. Then, she slumped to the floor with her eyes shut. This was on the theory that a sudden scare sometimes cures hiccups.

Bill Holloway got up.

"Baby, baby, baby, what's the matter?" he said.

After a period of motionlessness, she opened her eyes.

"I was trying to scare the hiccups out of you," she told him.

"But I still got them," he replied.

His condition is believed to be physical in origin, but doctors for a time had him taking antipsychotic medication that sometimes helps hiccupers. They also installed a pacemaker to protect his rattled heart. He's been probed, scoped and scanned. About the only known medical protocol not tried is phrenic nerve ablation. In that, a doctor would paralyze a nerve that controls the diaphragm, but the procedure was deemed too risky for a man of Holloway's age and condition.

The couple did achieve one breakthrough on the home-care front. Helen Holloway came up with the idea of flushing the sinuses with saltwater and gargling with a mild apple-cider vinegar solution. The hiccups went into remission for approximately 25 days. They came back as Holloway finished a slice of apple cake his wife had made for Valentine's Day.

As Holloway recalls that day and his disappointment, he admits to being frustrated that there is no definitive cure for hiccups. As a man of faith, he's keeping some perspective.

"In one respect, I love it. I can pray better. I'm closer to God," he said. "I don't ask God to cure me per se, just give me the strength to endure what you have to endure. Sure, I've asked Lord God, 'Why me?' But look at it this way: He's given me 84 years. A whole lot of people haven't lived this long."