Meken Alimbetova, who was working in a plumbing supplies shop in Shymkent, Kazakhstan, put a big plastic T-fitting over her head when making a funny video in promotion of the shop on its social media page sometime in mid-October 2026. Local media houses like Ulysmedia.kz and Krisp.kz had provided the same basic information regarding the incident: she was filming herself with her mobile in the shop; her co-workers laughed at first; it got stuck; she experienced neck stiffness, face swelling, and breathing problems.
Alimbetova is quoted by Ulysmedia:
“At first we all laughed, it was very funny. Then I already started to suffocate. It was as if my face began to swell.”
She added:
“I already started to cry, a colleague couldn’t take it, pressed on my nose and pulled the pipe off right in the car.”
Alimbetova’s account, carried by Ulysmedia, states colleagues took her to a hospital that “did not accept them.” Removal then occurred in the car. Krisp.kz reported she went to a trauma point where staff freed her without damaging the fitting. Neither outlet named the facility or provided independent confirmation from medical staff. Secondary aggregators repeated both versions. Claims of imitators appeared in Ulysmedia but lack quantified independent verification.
Whether hospital staff refused treatment or performed the removal remains disputed between the first-person account and the shorter Krisp version. No official emergency-service statement, medical records, or hospital response has surfaced. Exact date of the filming itself is not fixed beyond the Oct. 17 reporting window.
The core incident Alimbetova intentionally putting the T-fitting on her head for a store video, becoming trapped, experiencing distress, and eventual removal is corroborated by contemporaneous local reporting and video. The hospital-refusal detail and precise method of extraction rest on her attributed statements and conflict with one secondary local report; they should be presented as her account rather than independently established fact. The event is genuine; some circulating descriptions of the rescue are not fully settled.
