Following your post Brad.
My 18 year old daughter has been house bound for over a year (long story... but her rectal cuff had left over inflammation everyone forgot about until they attached the j pouch. She is on infliximab and it seems to be helping/allowing the cuff to heal) BUT.... we struggle with toileting. We have had some incredibly great days (7 bowel movements during day and 1 at night), and A LOT of incredibly awful days (used to be 30 bowel movements during day, 12 at night - although settled down to 15 day and 10 night since cuff healing). As a mother, I am trying to find the best "meals" and "foods" to make for my daughter. Right now I'm trying to create an easy menu. We have been taking Visbiome (here in Canada), but only one packet a day, in yogurt with one opened capsule of saccharomyces boulardii. I know sugary foods are the enemy... but her tastes buds have changed from really enjoying healthy food, to those with a lot of hidden sugars (another long story). She uses about 8-10 sublingual imodium and 6 Lomotil a day (with permission from all her doctors). There have been days where bowel movements were few, without any medication help - and I wish we could have many more of these days. She too has been tested for c. difficile and it's negative (had it twice but the infectious diseases doctors eradicated it by weaning her off vancomycin for 6 additional weeks). At this point, she has missed out on a lot of life and rightfully wants her ileostomy back. She, like you Brad, has had a lot of very similar symptoms - toileting frequency, consistency issues, really loud abdominal gurgling with pain (which 7 different pain/antispasmodic drugs never came close to decreasing it).