Florists work with pins and wire constantly, tucking stray blooms into place and pinning ribbon around stems so fast it barely registers as a habit. For Anna Rajcsak of Story Floral Designs, that habit turned into a hospital stay when a sharp floral pin she’d been holding in her mouth while assembling a bridesmaid bouquet slipped down her throat. She was 28 weeks pregnant at the time.
Rajcsak was filming her process, the kind of behind-the-scenes content florists often post to show clients how a bouquet comes together, when the pin she’d been parking between her lips for quick access went down instead of into the stems. According to Rajcsak, the moment happened fast enough that she barely had time to react before her body did what bodies do: she swallowed.
What followed was a scramble that Rajcsak has described in detail on Instagram. She called for help immediately, aware that a sharp object moving through her digestive system was a real medical concern, made more urgent by her pregnancy. She was taken in for evaluation and an X-ray, which confirmed what she already feared: the pin was inside her, sharp end and all, somewhere along her digestive tract.
From there, Rajcsak said doctors attempted an endoscopic procedure, threading a camera and retrieval tool down through her throat in hopes of catching the pin before it could travel further or cause internal damage. The attempt did not succeed. According to Rajcsak, the pin had already moved past the point where doctors could safely reach it, leaving her medical team with a harder decision: let it continue passing through her system naturally, while watching closely for any signs of injury or distress.
That meant days of uncertainty. Rajcsak said she was hospitalized for four days total, much of it spent on a restricted, liquid-based diet meant to help ease the object through her system without aggravating her digestive tract or putting additional strain on her pregnancy. She underwent repeated imaging during that stretch so doctors could track the pin’s position and watch for warning signs. Every day without complications was a relief, but also a day of not knowing exactly when, or how, it would finally pass.
Rajcsak later confirmed to her followers that the pin ultimately passed through her system on its own, without the injury doctors had been watching for. She described the relief of finally getting confirmation, after days of scans and careful monitoring, that the ordeal was over. Throughout the videos documenting her hospital stay, she was careful to frame her account as her own experience rather than general medical guidance, something worth keeping in mind for anyone watching her story unfold: what happened to her body, and how her care team handled it, was specific to her situation and her pregnancy.
The video struck a nerve with an audience far beyond florists. Plenty of viewers admitted they, too, have held pins, nails, or bobby pins in their mouths while working with their hands, a habit passed down through trades like sewing, upholstery, and floral design because it keeps small objects within reach. Rajcsak’s story became, for many of them, the first time they seriously considered what could go wrong.
Small Habit, Real Risk: Safer Ways To Work With Pins And Wire
Florists, seamstresses, upholsterers, and craftspeople of all kinds develop small workflow habits over years on the job, and holding sharp pins in the mouth for quick access is one of the most common, and most quietly risky, of them all. A few adjustments can keep the same speed and convenience without the danger.
- Use a magnetic pin dish or wrist pincushion. Both keep pins within arm’s reach and sorted for quick grabbing, without ever going near your mouth.
- Keep a designated “working tray” at your station. Lay out the exact pins, wire, and floral picks you’ll need for a piece before you start, so there’s less reaching and less temptation to improvise with your mouth as free storage.
- Switch to a pin cushion you can pin directly into. A cushion clipped to your apron or sitting on the table means one motion to grab, one motion to place, with nothing held loose in between.
- Slow down on repetitive tasks. Habits like mouth-holding pins usually form during fast, repetitive work; building in small pauses can interrupt the muscle memory before it becomes automatic again.
- If you swallow something sharp, don’t wait it out at home. Rajcsak’s team moved quickly to get imaging and evaluate the object’s position, which is the standard, sensible response any time something sharp goes down instead of a soft object.
Rajcsak has continued designing bouquets since her hospital stay, but she’s been open that the experience changed how she handles pins on set for good. For an industry built on fast hands and small sharp tools, her story is a reminder that the habits we don’t think twice about are often exactly the ones worth reconsidering.
