Summary
Overview
In this wild card episode of Armchair Anonymous, hosts Dax Shepard and Monica Padman hear three extraordinary stories from callers: Sarah from Canada who set her hair on fire during intimate moments while pregnant, Shama from Paris who inhaled a sewing pin into her lung, and Alex from Colorado who narrowly escaped a deadly funicular train fire that killed 161 people—echoing his mother's own miraculous escape from a plane crash decades earlier.
Sarah's Flaming Hair Incident During Pregnancy
Sarah shares a mortifying story from six years ago when she was eight months pregnant with her first child. In an attempt to surprise her boyfriend with a romantic evening, she set the scene with candles and music. During an intimate moment on the couch, she leaned over and her hair caught fire from a candle. The smell of burning hair triggered severe nausea due to her pregnancy, despite her being a nurse who'd encountered many unpleasant medical smells. Her boyfriend's response afterward was surprisingly unaffected by the incident.
- Sarah was eight months pregnant and tried to surprise her boyfriend with a romantic encounter on the couch
- While leaning over the couch arm, her hair caught fire from a candle—she saw the light even with her eyes closed
- As a nurse who works in operating rooms, she'd smelled necrotic bowel and burnt flesh, but burning hair during pregnancy was the worst smell she'd ever experienced
- The smell triggered violent nausea and vomiting, and she lost a significant chunk of her hair
- After the incident, her boyfriend asked if she wanted to finish what they started
" I had leaned over the candle and my hair was up in flames. You were ablaze. A human torch. "
" And then after a few minutes of that, I hear a gentle knock on the door and my boyfriend go, Sarah, are you okay? No, I'm not okay. I just had the worst thing happen to me. "
" After two kids, I've come to realize that he doesn't care. Yeah, nothing can really stand in the way. "
Shama's Pin in the Lung Emergency
Shama, a fashion student from Paris, recounts a terrifying incident from 2007 when she was 19 years old. While sewing late at night with pins in her mouth—a common practice among seamstresses—she coughed or sneezed and swallowed a pin. After initially being misdiagnosed at the ER with a doctor insisting the pin must be on her body rather than inside it, her mother's surgeon friend correctly identified that she had actually inhaled the pin into her lung. She required a three-day hospital stay and bronchoscopy to remove it.
- Shama was a 19-year-old fashion student in Paris sewing late at night with pins in her mouth when she inhaled one
- The ER doctor insisted after X-rays that the pin must be stuck on her body, not inside it, and sent her home to eat bread
- Her mother, who is a doctor, consulted a surgeon friend who immediately diagnosed it was in her lungs
- The pin was already rusting inside her lung when they removed it via bronchoscopy after three days
- When she returned to fashion school, her Japanese teacher with broken French simply said 'you stupid'
" At some point, I don't remember, it was really late, I coughed or sneezed, I don't know, but I swallowed it. "
" I didn't swallow it. I inhaled it. Oh, holy shit. "
" When I arrived, I remember in my sewing class, the teacher was Japanese with a real big Japanese accent, not speaking very good French. And he saw me and he just said, you stupid. "
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