12-year-old girl’s multiple sneezes baffle medics

Lauren Johnson is a sixth-grader who looks like any other 12-year-old girl.

But there is something very different about her –  it is the young girl’s continuous sneezing that immediately catches your attention.

Ever since Lauren caught a cold in Chesapeake, Virginia two weeks ago, she has been sneezing more than 12,000 times a day.

“I can’t stop sneezing,” said Lauren after sneezing twice in seven seconds.  “It goes off about eight to nine times a minute.”

Lauren sneezed six times in 17 seconds it took for her to say:  “It was different and I just kind of went with it thinking that it wouldn’t last this long, but it’s been two weeks now and it just hasn’t stopped.”

Lynn Johnson, Lauren’s mother, says she suffers every time she hears her daughter sneeze.  Despite visiting six different doctors and taking 11 different medications, the sneezing continues.

The Johnsons took Lauren to psychotherapy and hypnosis specialist and  Virginia Beach but  to no avail.

Surprisingly, Lauren does not sneeze when she is asleep.

“It turns off when she sleeps,” Lynn said.  “Only in a deep REM sleep it turns off.”

The most amazing thing of all is that Lauren has adapted to her predicament so well that sometimes, she claimed not to have any inkling that she has been sneezing.

[via fox43tv.com]