If you get really tired after shoveling snow, don’t fall asleep wearing your AirPods while watching “The Thing” or bad things can happen – like ingesting one of your AirPods, requiring it to be recovered via an endoscopy procedure.
Bradford Gauthier for The Guardian:
On 1 February this year, snow fell heavily on my home town of Worcester, Massachusetts, and I had been shovelling for an hour and a half before turning in at midnight. I was exhausted, but it’s my habit to watch movies on my phone as I go to sleep. I put on a favourite – the 1980s version of The Thing, starring Kurt Russell. It’s the story of researchers in Antarctica being gradually taken over by a malevolent alien.
Within 10 minutes of the opening credits, I could barely keep my eyes open. The next thing I knew, four hours had passed, my wife, Heather, was asleep beside me and the movie had long finished. Groggily, I moved my phone off the pillow and removed the wireless AirPod headphone from one ear – the other had fallen out and I couldn’t find it…
At the walk-in centre, the receptionist asked for my symptoms. My response was met with a bemused look and the doctor who examined me was incredulous. She said people with an object lodged in their throat usually experience a lot of pain, plus it seemed unlikely that I could have inadvertently swallowed a piece of plastic an inch and a half long. I was left on my own as she went to examine the results of a precautionary X-ray.
The doctor’s expression when she returned was priceless. “Well, I’ll be damned,” she said. She led me to her workstation, which was surrounded by medical staff. On the screen was a cartoon-clear image of my ribs and, parked between them at 45 degrees, the unmistakable shape of the missing AirPod…
[At] the endoscopy centre, where the AirPod was got back out via my mouth using a tube with a lasso attachment. It was extremely uncomfortable, but I was sedated and so only half awake. A few minutes later, I was given the AirPod in a neat little bag.
I tried it as soon as I got home. It works fine…
MacDailyNews Take: Apple AirPods take a licking — and then some — and keep on ticking!