“We went to the media for one reason only, but now I just feel like she is being used,” Chris told Park. “She’s not for sale. She’s a human being.”
CHAPTER 31
JENNIFER MEE WAS back in St. Pete after what turned out to be two appearances on Today and a taped segment for Inside Edition. Now every media outlet in the Tampa region wanted her, as well as media from all around the country and world. Jennifer was smiling from ear to ear, enjoying every moment in the limelight.
By February 26, 2007, the Tampa Bay Times had received more than two hundred thousand hits on its website, most of those interested in the stories about Jennifer’s hiccupping ordeal. Two thousand e-mails had come into the newspaper inquiring about Jennifer, many of those offering advice, remedies, and well wishes. Mary Jane Park had received upward of over one thousand voice mails regarding the stories she’d published. What was interesting, Park pointed out in an article published in late February, now just over one month after Jennifer began hiccupping, was that Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith had been the subject of tabloid banner headlines and consistent and constant rumors—salacious and scandalous and likely false as they were. Both women were continuously in the news. Yet, Jennifer’s story had trumped even those two headline-grabbing celebrities, usurping them as the latest pop culture phenomenon.
Most of the attention was built around public sympathy for Jennifer. Americans in general felt sorry for her. Sure, there was a group of Internet haters, alongside some people out in public, who liked to ridicule and make fun of Jennifer. But for the most part, people felt horrible for the predicament she found herself in by not being able to stop hiccupping. As all of the attention grew, incredibly, Jennifer’s hiccups grew louder and more animated. Whenever she went into a building for an interview or a doctor’s appointment, the focus would be all on her and her hiccups as she could be heard from one end of the building to the other. Often, Jennifer would be placed in a room by herself because the hiccups were so loud and disruptive.
One expert whom Park interviewed nailed it when he said the public likely viewed Jennifer as a “damsel in distress.”
Today was not leaving the story alone. The show had a crew following Jennifer whenever she went to a doctor’s appointment. A local radio station, which had had Jennifer on as a guest, spoke to a local theater owner at the Channelside Cinemas in Tampa. Going to the movies had been one thing Jennifer said she loved and now missed since the hiccups had started. The movies had been a Friday-night habit for her and a few friends. Thus, after hearing her disappointment about missing out on the movies, the theater owner closed the theater on that Friday night after she returned from New York and allowed Jennifer and a few chosen friends the run of the place. Jennifer chose to see the Eddie Murphy movie Norbit. She and her friends were given the red-carpet treatment with free popcorn, candy, and soda.
As Jennifer went to see a new round of doctors, there was some indication that a recent bout Jennifer had had with strep throat and a vertebra compression picked up on a new MRI scan might have contributed to her having developed acute, intractable hiccups. Yet, the cause, Rachel felt at this point of their ordeal, was insignificant to the fact that Jennifer was still hiccupping relentlessly.
Some professionals had a different theory: “I believe the cause of her hiccups,” said one professional who saw Jennifer near this time, “was much, much deeper and more personal. Jennifer wanted to have the hiccups, effectively.”
Still, those diagnoses, along with the suggestions of many people writing in and e-mailing, were enough to push Jennifer, who had been against it from the start because of her fear of needles, to seek treatment from an acupuncturist.
“The treatment wasn’t bad,” Jennifer said afterward. “It was actually very relaxing.”
Yet, it did nothing to stop the hiccups.
CHAPTER 32
AFTER SEEING JENNIFER’S story in the media, Pennsylvania entrepreneur Michele Ehlinger decided to give Rachel a call to find out if Jennifer would be interested in testing a product Michele’s husband had invented especially for Michele in 1990. The company they created had become a side business for the two of them.
Their company, Hic-Cup Ltd., manufactured and sold a cup (or “cure”) for the hiccups. The product is an actual stainless-steel cup with a brass anode, or strawlike apparatus attached to the side with a non-electricity-conducting clip.
Michele explained how the cup works, telling me: “Our product was developed by my husband when I was pregnant with our first son. . . . [My husband’s] background is in architecture, and he does a lot of invention and creative fabrication in metal, wood, and other materials.”
It came about like a lot of inventions: out of the necessity to try and fix a problem. Due to the fact that most of the traditional “home hiccup remedies were inappropriate for a pregnant woman,” Michele said, her husband started looking into any type of relief he could find for a terrible, pregnancy-induced bout of the hiccups, which Michele was experiencing then.
Thus, the Hic-Cup cup was born.
“Medical literature seemed to suggest that hiccups are influenced by the vagus nerve,” Michele added. (Vagus is Latin for “wanderer.”) “The longest nerve in the body, it is involved in many body systems. Although we have no medical education, it seemed like something that influenced the vagus nerve may help interrupt the hiccup reflex arc.”
Michele’s husband experimented by creating a low-level electrical current inside the cup, manufacturing a “metal cup with two different metals immersed in a potable liquid.... Ultimately, the first prototype was a stainless-steel Coleman camping cup with a copper rod sticking up on one side. When filled with regular tap water, an electrical test meter records about one hundred and fifty milliamps of current produced by the cup and its metal parts. Too low a current to feel, but apparently enough to stop hiccups,” Michele explained.
“[Jennifer] might be the perfect person to try the Hic-Cup on, and if it cures her, we could maybe get her to promote the cup,” Michele told her husband while discussing Jennifer Mee’s condition.
Picking up the phone, Michele was skeptical. She had seen Jennifer and Rachel on television and had reservations about the veracity of Jennifer’s hiccup claims. Why? She never said. Still, Michele questioned her own judgment because she knew that from dealing with people affected by the hiccups all over the world (with the exception of only four countries), every person suffering from intractable hiccups experienced different symptoms. Moreover, Michele understood that every hiccup sufferer hiccupped differently—the sound, the rhythm, and the amount of hiccups per minute.
“What the heck, why not call and talk to them?”
Michele made the call and Rachel said she and Jennifer were interested. They made plans to meet as soon as Michele could secure a flight from Pennsylvania to Florida.
Within a few days, Michele called Rachel back and gave her a day and time she would be in St. Pete. (“And Rachel said she and Jennifer would be there waiting. . . .”)
Michele hopped on the short flight.
She had decided to stay the night. There was no sense in meeting with Rachel and Jennifer and flying back the same night.
Fresh off the plane, Michele called the house. The line rang and rang, but nobody answered.
Strange, Michele thought. They’re expecting my visit.
She had explained she’d call the moment she got off the plane.
“We’d made a setup time to meet, and it wasn’t that far away from that exact time when I called,” Michele explained later.
She had some time to spare, so Michele did a few things. Got her bags and a cup of coffee. Sat down and caught her breath.
Fifteen to thirty minutes passed.
She tried the number again.
Chris Robidoux answered this time, according to Michele. “Yeah?”
She explained who she was.
“Um, they’re not here,” Chris said to the utter shock of Michele. “Rachel, J
ennifer, and a few of her friends went to the local amusement park with a camera crew.”
Michele was aghast. She’d made plans with Rachel. She’d flown all the way down to Florida. Her flight was leaving at six o’clock the next morning.
Amusement park?
Michele found out that a local television station had agreed to pay for Jennifer and her friends to go to the park, as long as they could film it.
“Not sure when they’ll be back,” Chris said.
“Ah . . . really?” Michele didn’t know what to say, better yet what to do.
“Call back,” Chris said. “That’s all I can tell you.”
Michele checked into her hotel. Then she went and found the neighborhood where Rachel and Chris lived, pulled into a nearby restaurant, and called the house again.
“Nope, not home yet.”
Michele was astounded. She had plans to meet Jennifer and Rachel at a specific time, a specific date. What was going on? Did they not take this seriously?
She ordered some food. She called the house again after dinner—it was now well into the evening—and they were finally home. Rachel gave Michele directions to the house.
It was six o’clock at night when Michele arrived.
“They seemed almost uninterested in my presence,” Michele recalled, referring to her first impression of Rachel and Jennifer. “I thought that if they were truly interested in curing the hiccups Jennifer had, they knew I was going to be there and that we were supposed to meet at noon, and yet she’s at an amusement park with friends?” If it had been one of Michele’s children with the hiccups, she later noted, and a possible cure was flying in, “I would have met them at the airport!”
The Robidoux house was cluttered and “busy,” lots of things placed everywhere. You could tell a lot of people had been packed inside a small area.
“Hi,” Michele said, shaking hands with Rachel and Chris after they let her in.
Rachel asked Michele to get comfortable in the dining room.
* * *
In the company founders’ opinions, the Hic-Cup cup had worked for the many people whom Michele and her husband had sold it to. The company had received a patent for the apparatus in 2006. The patent described “curing” the hiccups with the Hic-Cup cup in a way that involved pouring tap water into the stainless-steel cup and creating an electrical current between the stainless steel and the brass rod. Thus, when one drank the electrically charged water, a microcurrent and “flow of ions” traveled from the lips to the vagus nerve, stimulating the nerve with an electrical charge that was enough to stop the hiccups. The charge allegedly went down the throat and gave the vagus nerve a little jolt, and that “slight shock is enough in many cases to stop the hiccups,” Michele asserted. “If you use orange juice, the charge is slightly stronger because of the acidity in the juice.”
In published reports, Joel Richter, a gastroenterologist and chairman of medicine at Temple University School of Medicine, called the cup “hocus-pocus,” while many in various medical fields agreed. Furthermore, there was no scientific research the company presented in 2006 to establish that there had been a study done indicating that the Hic-Cup cup actually worked in clinical trials.
“When my husband was developing the product in the 1990s,” Michele said, “we immediately discovered that it seemed to work every time I got hiccups.... We had no scientific proof, just anecdotal observations.”
Throughout the years, Michele went on to say, her husband produced many prototypes of the Hic-Cup cup. They handed them out to family and friends.
“All reported that it worked every time and was especially popular with children, who seem to get hiccups more frequently than adults. Indeed, we used the cup with our own children, and their friends would often come over when they had bad hiccups, just to use the cup. . . .”
It was then that they decided to form a small company, locating suppliers for the cup and its parts. They launched the business with a website.
“It was always just a little side business, and we never quit our day jobs. We explored getting FDA 510K approval of the Hic-Cup cup as a medical device because we learned from customers it was very effective in treating postsurgery anesthesia-induced hiccups. Ultimately we decided that people don’t take hiccups seriously enough to justify the expense of FDA approval to get the device into hospitals.”
* * *
The point that Michele made to Rachel as they chatted inside Rachel’s dining room was that the cup generally did not work the first time a patient used it. The cup took repeated effort to cure the hiccups.
Jennifer was in another room. She came in and shook Michele’s hand.
“We can give it a shot,” Michele said. “You’re just going to have to be patient, however. It’s going to take more than one time.”
Jennifer and Rachel seemed mildly interested, Michele said.
Maybe skeptical was a better way to put it. By this time, it’s important to note, Jennifer had been promised cures from all around the world. She had tried just about every imaginable remedy, and nothing had come close to working. So, yes, to Rachel and Jennifer, there was a bit of sarcasm and disbelief that a cup was the answer.
“You mind if I videotape this?” Michele asked.
Rachel didn’t have a problem. Neither did Jennifer.
Michele took out a tripod and video camera and set it up.
She had her finger on the RECORD button. “Okay, sit over here,” Michele said, directing Jennifer, hitting the button to begin recording. “You ready?”
She placed Jennifer in a chair so the camera was focused directly on her. She took out the cup, filled it with water, and gave it to Jennifer.
She took a sip.
Nothing.
“Let’s wait a little while, try it again.”
They waited.
Once again, nothing happened.
“Do you have any orange juice?” Michele asked. She explained how when the user put orange juice in the cup and drank out of it, the acidity in the juice was akin to giving the cup a “turbocharge.” This had worked especially well for chemotherapy patients that developed chemo-related hiccups, Michele later explained.
“We don’t,” Rachel said.
As she watched Rachel, Michele said later, Rachel seemed “very nonchalant about it all,” as if this was the next thing to do. “And so did Jennifer.”
But for Jennifer and Rachel, here was one more broken promise and failed remedy.
The entire time Michele was there, Jennifer hiccupped repeatedly, except when she spoke.
“Orange juice might help,” Michele suggested.
“Well, then, let’s get some orange juice. Chris, go get some orange juice at the store.”
Michele, Rachel, and Jennifer sat and waited for Chris.
When he returned, they tried the orange juice and it did not work, either.
After a few more tries, Michele later said, “None of it worked.” So she packed up her things, said her good-byes, and left the cup with Jennifer, telling both Jennifer and Rachel: “You know, if it ever does work, please call me. Maybe we could enter into a business relationship—that would be great.”
The implication Michele left them with was that if the cup worked, Hic-Cup Ltd. would be interested in perhaps hiring Jennifer in some capacity to help promote the product. For Michele and her husband, of course, it all depended on whether the cup did indeed work for the Hiccup Girl. Jennifer was getting a lot of attention. If their cup worked to stop her from hiccupping, it might be just the boost the business needed to take off. But without the cup working—which it clearly hadn’t, a fact Michele got on tape, no less—how could they claim that it had cured the Hiccup Girl?
Disappointed, but not at all upset, Michele was content that at least Jennifer came down and gave it a try. After all, part of the trip was business and another part was her wanting to help the girl stop hiccupping.
Michele went back to her hotel room, slept the night, and flew home th
e next morning—“And thought, ‘I’d never hear from Rachel again.’”
CHAPTER 33
DEBBIE LANE WAS sitting at the local coffee shop near her office on March 2, 2007, enjoying a cup of coffee, when her cell phone rang. Lane had been following Jennifer’s story in the newspapers. She was profoundly affected by Jennifer’s personal struggle and the torment that Lane perceived the affliction had caused Jennifer and the Robidoux family. A certified, practicing hypnotist, Lane wanted to help from the first moment she heard about Jennifer’s case. She truly believed that with properly administered hypnotherapy, she could help Jennifer eliminate or overcome whatever underlying, troubling issues from Jennifer’s past (or present) that were the foundation of what was causing her hiccups.
It was Rachel Robidoux on the other end of Lane’s phone line. Someone whom Lane did not know personally and had never spoken to before, but had certainly heard about in those news reports of Jennifer. As Lane saw things, she felt bad that Jennifer was being whisked around town, flown off to New York, and put up on a public stage for everyone to gawk at. The hypnotist worried about Jennifer’s delicate, young psyche being exploited by the media.
“I am Jennifer Mee’s mother. A reporter gave me your name and number. Are you willing to work with Jennifer?” Rachel asked during that first phone call.
“Absolutely,” Lane said. She explained that she would even waive her fee. She wanted to help Jennifer any way she could.
They made plans to meet that evening after Lane rearranged her schedule to make room for Jennifer.
Rachel and Jennifer arrived at Lane’s Palm Harbor office in the early evening hours of that same day. Jennifer’s friend Allison Baldwin was with them. Jennifer and Rachel were somewhat skeptical about the procedure, but they claimed they were willing to try anything at this point. It had been thirty-seven days and counting, and Jennifer was still hiccupping.
A typical session Lane conducted lasted one hour to ninety minutes. The hypnotist would spend some time with the client alone and learn as much as she could about the person before beginning the actual hypnotherapy. Hypnosis is designed to reach the inner awareness of a person, his or her primary sense of consciousness, and pick up on what the principal issues are surrounding a particular problem—i.e., lack of sleep, smoking, alcoholism, excessive eating, belching, farting, hiccupping, whatever. At its fundamental core, hypnosis aims to focus on the client’s goals: what does he or she want out of the session?
One Breath Away: The Hiccup Girl - From Media Darling to Convicted Killer Page 12