Bradford Gauthier put on his AirPods and went to sleep. When he got up in the morning, one of his AirPods had gone missing and he felt discomfort in the middle of this chest, as per the report. After doing some chores, he tried to have a glass of water but was unable to.
He went to the hospital where an X-ray was done which revealed that the AirPod was stuck in his oesophagus.
The doctors then did an emergency endoscopy to remove the stuck AirPod which Gauthier accidentally swallowed. The report quotes Gauthier as saying “The GI physician said it’s extremely uncommon for a blockage not to be painful or severely discomforting.” He further said that he was very lucky and never thought that sleeping with headphones on could be a ‘danger’. “It never occurred to me that [sleeping with headphones] could be a safety hazard. I was really quite lucky.”
Incidentally, when he told his family that he couldn’t find one of his AirPod, they joked that maybe he had swallowed it. However, the idea at that point seemed “too coincidental.” We guess it’s clear that sleeping with AirPods — or any other true wireless earbuds for that matter — isn’t really a good idea as you never know where they might end up.
