LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Hiccups are usually an annoying condition that goes away after a few minutes, but a Louisville man has been suffering from them for nearly two years, Louisville TV station WLKY reported.

Milton Betts is suffering from something doctors call intractable hiccups, which are hiccups lasting more than a month.

Betts has tried all manner of potential cures, but nothing has helped. Fifteen months later, he's hoping for a miracle.

"I can say I'm tolerating it better, because when I first got it, I remember telling you I didn't want to live like this," he said.

Over a year has gone by since WLKY first profiled Betts in November 2008, and he is still suffering.

"There's so many things when I got the hiccups I can't do anything," he said. "I just sit around most of the time. I missed a funeral. A wedding. Because when I have the hiccups I'm mostly at home. My head is hurting. I sweat, I can't sleep. In the middle of the night I have to get up and take medication because my chest and my stomach start burning … I cry to God and tell him to have mercy on me."

Betts has been to a chiropractor, tried acupuncture and even had his gallbladder removed, but nothing has helped.

"Eat some sugar, put it on the back of your tongue, drink on the wrong side of the glass, blow in a bag, stand on your head, just all kinds of stuff," he said.

Betts' team of doctors initially prescribed a cocktail of more than three dozen medications hoping something would work. He's down to a handful of medications today.

"One of them is for anxiety because anxiety comes with the hiccups. It feels like everything is just going haywire," Betts said. "It seems like my world is closing in."

He's also turned to supplements, but the hiccups return over and over again.

In his two decades of practice, University of Louisville pulmonologist Dr. Rafael Perez has only seen a handful of cases as severe as Betts'.

He said the trouble with diagnosing the underlying causes of the condition is there aren't enough patients with the problem, so it's difficult to get enough people for clinical trials.

As a result, people like Betts with very rare conditions become an "end of one study."

"He would be considered an end of one because there is no basis, no literature that would say, 'Here's how we have to treat this gentleman,' and basically that's what's been happening," he said. "Many, many different things have been tried. 'Well, let's see if the gallbladder is causing it.' They take it out, it didn't work. 'Well, let's try another approach.' And that's what's been done with this gentleman."

Betts said he's willing to try almost anything until he finds a cure, and he'll continue praying for a cure, too.

"I cry to God and tell him to have mercy on me," he said. "Life, you never know what kind of turns it's going to take, but you have to deal with it, but every morning I wake up I thank God I'm still alive."