Disturbing discovery in man's chest x-ray after he suffers a dry throat
A man’s chest x-ray has delivered a disturbing explanation behind a bizarre bout of swallowing difficulty and throat dryness.
Bradford Gauthier, from the US state of Massachusetts, began experiencing the abnormal symptoms earlier this week and initially put it down to them being an uncomfortable side effect of shovelling snow.
“I woke up this morning, felt fine, but when I tried to drink a glass of water it wouldn't go down, I had to lean over to let it spill out into the sink. Gross,” Mr Gauthier wrote to Facebook on Wednesday (local time).
“Something felt off with a lot of pressure in my chest, but I figured my throat was just dry or something from all the snow shovelling late last night,” he added.
Alarm bells started ringing however when Mr Gauthier started looking for his AirPod earphones that he had been using the night beforehand while falling asleep.
After scouring his room for the two wireless appliances and only finding one, a theory began to circulate the household suggesting he had swallowed the missing one.
The situation soon took a swift turn for the worse and before long, Mr Gauthier was on his way to hospital.
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“Fast forward to a trip to the emergency room and an x-ray, and sure enough I had an AirPod lodged in the lower part of my esophagus,” he wrote.
“I just had an emergency endoscopy to get it removed.”
He issued a warning to others, telling people to “be careful listening to wireless headphones when you fall asleep” because “you never know where they'll end up”.
“Big thanks to the Mrs for dropping everything and bringing me to get the procedure done,” he added.
His ordeal sparked a hilarious reaction after he shared it to the social media site, with people quizzing him on whether the earphone survived its journey through his body.
“Something straight out of a movie! That's wild! Glad you're ok,” one wrote in a comment.
“Thank God they saved it. Jeez what a morning,” another wrote.
Mr Gauthier said by the time he suspected his AirPod could be inside him it had well and truly run out of battery, preventing him from playing music through it.
After having it removed and charged up however, it was unbelievably still functional, just at a slightly lower volume.
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