Ever fallen asleep while listening to music? Ever then had your headphones fall off your ears? What if they fell off your ears and into your mouth? Which you then swallowed?!?! Well, thanks to some exhaustion and good (bad?) luck, Ben Hsu of Taiwan can now say yes to all these questions and live to tell the tale.
Ben fell asleep while listening to music, and when he awoke, could not find his second Apple AirPod. He looked in his lap, under his blanket, all over – but no dice. Then, using his iPhone tracking feature, he kept hearing them beep – still nothing. Then he listened closer, and behold! The AirPod was inside his stomach!
Ben quickly went to Kaohsiung Municipal United Hospital to have the issue remedied. They let him know that it was currently passing through his digestive system, saying it would need surgery to remove if it did not appear “naturally.”
Easily enough, the doctors gave him a laxative. More difficult, though, was the fact he would have to sift through any “waste” to find them. Fortunately, the AirPod revealed itself when Ben relieved himself at a railway station just the next day. Amazingly, the battery life was still at 41%!
Apple’s design team also breathed a sigh of relief. Had Ben been exposed to the battery, it could have caused serious damage to his intestines. Dr. Chen Chieh-fan explained: “Because of the plastic shell around the AirPod, the risk of it causing him harm in a similar way to swallowing a regular lithium-ion battery is much lower.”
All’s well that ends well for Ben. Maybe he will be a bit more careful sleeping and listening to tunes.
