This Woman Accidentally Swallowed an AirPod After Mistaking It for a Vitamin
AirPod owners constantly live in fear of dropping one of the tiny white earbuds into a sewer grate or between car seats. Accidentally eating one of them, however, isn't usually high on a list of potential worries.
A woman on TikTok shared her humbling experience mistaking one of her husband's AirPod Pros for vitamins and swallowing it whole. Tanna Barker, a Utah-based real estate agent, shared her story in a "vulnerable" post.
"I had a situation this morning that I'm still dealing with," she giggled. "This morning I was on my walk and I ran into a friend of mine, and I haven't seen her for a year." The conversation was deep as the two caught up when things took a turn for the worse. "Halfway through my walk I decided to take my vitamins, so I put my vitamins in, took a drink, and was like, 'Man, those are stuck.' So I guzzled my water, said goodbye to Kathleen, and went to go get my AirPod and my pills were in my hand."
Barker held back her laughter as she told the story, keeping her composure in a situation where commenters admitted they would have been freaking out. She assured viewers she reached out to medical professionals and friends and received the same answer on how to proceed: letting it pass naturally. "It's embarrassing, but I did it," she chuckled.
Barker opened up about what happened in an interview with Insider. "I could feel it going down so slow," the realtor recalled. She tearfully told her husband what happened with his AirPod, and he told her to not tell anyone; of course, she went on to tell her thousands of TikTok followers in the viral video now seen more than two million times.
Because the AirPod's battery is encased, letting it pass through her shouldn't present a problem. She was especially lucky that she only swallowed one and not both, as they're magnetized and could've been an issue if they were stuck together. Funny enough, her husband was able to track the AirPod using Apple's "Find My" app. When he held his phone up to her stomach, the app indicated that the AirPods were "here."
She later posted another video on a walk from the spot where she usually takes her vitamins, admitting she had "PTSD"—or in this case, "PTAS"—"post-traumatic AirPod stress."
The saga came to an end just as quickly as it started. She shared a long-awaited update yesterday as part of her Take 2 with Tanna series; the title, she laughingly admitted, "takes on a whole new meaning now" as she won't be able to say it with a straight face ever again.
"One of the hashtags [on the original video] was #ThisTooShallPass. And it has," she laughed. "It has been such an amazing experience and such a wild ride, and I am so grateful that I have been able to protect my mindset so when things like this happen in my life, and this has been the most extreme for sure, but I have had experiences in my life where I've been able to have my mindset protected and that I've been able to look at it with positivity and lightness."
It's not the first time a TikToker has gone viral for accidentally ingesting the Apple earbuds thinking they were pills. Back in 2021, a woman tearfully explained what happened after mistaking one of her AirPods for an ibuprofen, forcing herself to vomit but having to wait for it to come out naturally.
Barker, then, might be on to something. What else can you do in a situation like this but laugh?
