The more you go, the more you have to go?

I have noticed that I tend to have to go to the bathroom in clusters. I will feel okay for a few hours and then, when I have a bad episode in the bathroom, it opens up the floodgates. I can go hours, and then once I have gone to the bathroom I will then go another 3 or 4 times in the next hour or so. Do you notice any patterns like that?

Most definitely!

This is exactly how it happens, my theory is that the first 'movement' irritates the ulcers and starts the colon spasming, then every other 'piece' of 'stuff' that comes in contact with the irritated walls triggers even more chaos, and so on until you're basically empty.

Quincy taught me well-- sometimes when that happens over and over and over again, you should consider taking an anti-spasmodic m medication, to 'teach' the colon to quiet down a bit. Use with discretion-- anything that slows the colon down during the flare could potentially lead to toxic megacolon, so you'd only want to do that when a flare is subsiding.

I also noticed this pattern during flare-ups. To me, it seemed like the first time I went to the toilet the stools were less loose than what then went on in subsequent visits.

It was as if the first batch was acting a bit like a plug, and holding above it much looser stuff. I associated this with the condition of the various sections of my colon. As I was taking foam enemas at the time, the lowest part of the colon received most of the medicine, and so was probably in a better shape than the sections above it.

As I got more used to, even more skilled at, using enemas, I found that more of the medicine seemed to reach further up the colon than before, and the first batch of stools became firmer, and I had less urgency to go. That in itself meant that the stools above the first batch stayed in the colon for longer, and the colon (damaged as it was) had more time to extract fluids from them, and so they became firmer too.

This also meant that my toilet frequency went down, and so the colon became less irritated, and so on and so forth. It was really a virtuous healing cycle, which once I got the hang of I managed to get myself out of bad fare-ups, and also got on top of them more quickly.