A man warns people not to wear hearing aids while sleeping after health workers had to remove a wireless headset from their esophagus.
Worcester resident Brad Gauthier, who detailed his strange experience in a Facebook post, went to bed on Monday to listen to music. He woke up on Tuesday, shoveled snow for about an hour, then went in for a drink of water. But the liquid did not go down and he had to bend over to let it drain from his throat.
Gauthier also noted that he was missing one of his two wireless headphones, which he normally wears when he falls asleep.
Gauthier’s son suggested that his father might have swallowed the earpiece, which is exactly what an X-ray at a local emergency clinic revealed. The small plastic device was stuck in the lower part of his esophagus.
Gauthier said he has never experienced more than a minor discomfort. He told NBC Boston 10 that he wanted to share his experience to warn others not to sleep on his headphones.