I have been deathly ill. I saw something rather strange.

I have been laid up for the last 40 hours, bedridden with a most unpleasant gastroenteritis. My experience reminded me a bit of a definition I read of the Ebola virus, when the person "crashes out" and body fluids rush from every available orifice, leaving the person looking like a de-skeletonized piece of humanoid material.

The time I spent in bed, waiting for my next mad race to the bathroom, was spent reading, watching tv, and making phone calls. One of my phone calls was to my brother and after I told him about my current sickness, he of course had to one-up me with tales of sicknessess past.

He told me of a particularly extreme case of diarrhea combined with such intense physical pain that he popped an oxycotin 80 in order to numb the pain somewhat. Shortly thereafter a volcanic reaction began in his inner regions and he raced to the bathroom and released another torrent of the unpleasant, odiferous body waste. Afterwards, as he rose from the porcelain chair he glanced into the bowl and was stunned to see the oxcotin pill floating in the muck. The pill was still pefectly formed and the "8O" perfectly legible.

I was quite amazed by this story. We talked of other things and after a bit I bid him farewell and burrowed back into my blankets, awaiting the next madcap race to the bathroom. As it turned out -- the wait was short. Five minutes. I ran into the bathroom and the exploding sounds caused my cat to scurry away in a feline frenzy. I even noticed a small spider running for his life. I reached for the toilet handle to flush away the offensive, foul-smelling waste product, but my brother's story of the oxycotin tablet came to mind, and with a morbid curiosity I glanced into the toilet bowl to see if anything strange lurked there. Imagine my surprise when I saw a perfectly formed grilled cheese sandwich floating in the midst of the carnage.

I recalled that that was the last thing I ate before being felled by the sickness.

I flushed and watched with bemusemet as the sandwich twirled slowly and began its downward journey with the waste product. The points of the sandwich caught momentarily on the edge of the drainpipe, held for a second, and then it was gone.

I'm better now, but I can't shake the haunting image of that grilled cheese sandwich.

What's the most unusual item you've seen in your waste product?