WORCESTER, MASS. (WHDH) - A Worcester man who lost one of his wireless earbuds ended up finding it lodged in his esophagus.
Brad Gauthier says he fell asleep with one of his Apple AirPods in his ear while watching a movie but when he woke up, it was missing.
Unsure of where it was but feeling fine, he says he got up to get a glass of water.
“I took a big gulp and it shocked me, it started filling up my esophagus,” Gauthier recalled. “It was the weirdest feeling.”
His son began to joke around that maybe his dad had swallowed his AirPod.
Gauthier went to the doctors and an X-ray showed that he did just that.
“She said, ‘I’ll be damned you swallowed it,'” he recollected.
The missing earpiece had become lodged in his lower esophagus and doctors had to perform an endoscopy to remove it.
Gauthier said that he had not been able to use the “Find My AirPod” feature because the battery died.
“If I hit the button and that beep came out of my mouth, I probably would have had a heart attack,” he said.
While Gauthier avoided serious health problems, he didn’t come away from this completely problem-free.
“The audio works perfectly but sadly the microphone is a bit glitchy so I’m in the market for new AirPods,” he added.
Gauthier says he’s going to start using earbuds with wires to prevent this from happening again.
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