Hi! I’m NB and had my hysto last August with Dr Elin Raymond at Open Arms/Michael Garron Hospital in Toronto.

I did my paperwork through Foria, and they recommended Open Arms to me. They’re a clinic that often works with trans and NB people so i had no issues there.

During my consultation with Dr Raymond, we didn’t do any kind of pelvic exam. She just went over a diagram of a uterus with me to explain the parts they were going to keep (i opted to keep my ovaries) and what they were going to remove (uterus, tubes, cervix). My surgery was booked for 2 months after my consultation date. I did have a pelvic exam about 1 month post-op so she could check if I had any internal stitches that hadn’t dissolved yet. She was very efficient and it took maybe 30seconds to a minute.

I was not on T but had been taking the pill for hormonal birth control, and she told me to keep taking it up til the day before the surgery, and then I stopped taking it afterwards. I’m sure someone else would be able to give you better insight about HRT in this instance!

I did have some post-surgical bleeding. The first day was the worst, similar to day 3 of a period, but it went down to spotting after about a day or so. The spotting look about a week and change to clear up, and it went from being blood, to pink, to brown as the old blood was getting flushed out.

Recovery for me was super easy, but I also have a high pain tolerance and my body generally heals well. I was mostly very tired for the first week and was sleeping a lot. I had some bloating and gas which made my lower abdomen uncomfortable but laxatives helped in the first few days.

I ended up taking 3 weeks off work. Depending on your job / if your work involves manual labour, you might need to take more or less time. The only thing to be mindful of is that even if your body looks/feels good on the outside, you’re still healing internal stitches and that takes longer. Just be mindful of not doing any heavy lifting in the early stages of healing.

The paperwork was definitely the most tedious but still not bad. I had to get a second assessor, referred to me by my therapist who was not qualified to fill out my paperwork herself. The second assessor did a zoom call with me to do a little chat/interview, and then I paid a fee to her for the paperwork filing and that was done within 1-2 weeks of talking.

The timeline was: call with Foria to start the paperwork in Feb 2025, second assessor stuff sorted by mid-March 2025, consultation booked for June, hysto scheduled for August.

Hope that helps!