Massachusetts man swallows AirPods in his sleep

A Massachusetts man went to bed listening to music on his Apple AirPods — and woke up with one of the wireless headphones inside of him.

Brad Gauthier is warning other AirPod users about his experience with the rare, but increasingly frequent, medical mishap that sent him to the emergency room this week.

Having no idea where his missing AirPod had disappeared to, Gauthier woke up on Tuesday morning and spent about an hour shoveling snow from his driveway with the device unknowingly lodged in his throat.

When he went inside to take a drink of water, the liquid wouldn’t go down — and Gauthier’s son suggested that perhaps he’d swallowed the missing earbud.

“By that point, my son and wife . . . brought it up jokingly at first, but it seemed too coincidental that I would be missing it when I knew I went to bed with it, while I felt a distinct blockage in the center of my chest,” Gauthier told local TV station 22 News.

An X-Ray, taken at a local emergency room and obtained by WWLP.com, shows a faint image of an earbud-shaped blockage in Gauthier’s throat.

Doctors used a long, thin tube to retract the AirPod, which measures about two inches long, and Gauthier was on his way — having experienced no more than minor discomfort.

“The GI physician said it’s extremely uncommon for a blockage not to be painful or severely discomforting,” he told WWLP. “It never occurred to me that [sleeping with headphones] could be a safety hazard. I was really quite lucky.” 

via: https://nypost.com/2021/02/06/massachusetts-man-swallows-airpods-in-his-sleep/

Photo Credit: Caters News Agency