Ghost Tablet scare (or that time when I thought a parasite was living inside my body)

I don't know about the rest of you, but I have this habit of looking at my stool after taking a dump to appreciate what I have brought out into the world. You can imagine my surprise when I noticed what I thought looked like a reptilian egg floating alongside my stool. I tried to splash some water on it to separate it from the main stool, and it just floated there while the rest of the stool broke apart.

I spent the rest of the following days worrying I was hosting some parasite inside me. And what kind of parasite will have an egg that size, roughly the size of my thumb?

As it turns out, it just so happened that I had just made the switch to the extended-release version of my medication, and what I had been seeing in my stool was the spent pill in which the active ingredient was slowly leaching out. It really did look like a reptilian egg. 

Not the actual specimen. 😑

The whole thing is apparently well documented with the advent of extended-release tablets and is more commonly known as a "ghost pill." What's particularly disconcerting is that the pill can appear several times its original size, gradually expanding as it makes its way through your intestinal tract.