Jeffrey Coolidge//GETTY IMAGES
The fairer sex is no stranger to endless hours spent in the powder room. But even for Frenchwomen who love extensive beauty regimes, three weeks is an eternity to be stuck in the can.
And that’s just what happened to a Parisian grandmother after her bathroom door jammed shut thanks to a broken lock. Surviving on just tap water for 20 days, the 69 year-old tried to alert neighbors by tapping on pipes at night to get their attention. Unfortunately, residents in the apartment building confused the sound for DIY home repair and launched a petition to find out who it was to have it stopped. But neighbors finally took notice of her absence and alerted authorities who broke into her Parisian home and rescued her Friday. The woman emerged in a “very weakened” state and is said to now be recuperating in the hospital.
(Read TIME’s Too Much Information: Website Tracks Flushes to Promote World Health)
“You could hear banging sounds, like a hammer, even at night,” one neighbor told local media. “But we thought they were doing work at night. We said: ‘They are going too far! They are preventing us from sleeping!’ If we had known….'”
But if you had to choose a confined space to be trapped in, a bathroom comes top of NewsFeed’s list. Not only do you get access to a shower, toilet and water, but you also get to finish that stack of ancient Reader’s Digests piling up.