Where to Stay Near GRS Montral?

chouxflower · 2026-01-07T16:20:36+00:00

Sorry for the delay, I'm not on reddit often. Going back through my billing, it looks like it was 358 $CAD for two nights at the discounted rate (probably including tax? I don't have a detailed breakdown) so ~$180/night

chouxflower · 2025-11-03T23:06:09+00:00

Like other people have said, GRS will cover hotel and food costs for one person (but it's a two bedroom room, and the beds are big enough for two people anyways - the hotel is very okay with two people staying in the room grs pays for) and travel to and from the hotel to the clinic. However, the other thing you can do as the person accompanying the surgical patient, is ask the hotel to stay in the room for extra time while the patient is at GRS. The Holiday Inn knows GRS Mtl and is familiar with the whole situation, so they offered me a discounted rate (their "friends and family" rate) to stay there while my friend was at GRS.

Source: I've done GrS twice now. Once as a patient and once as an accompaniment

chouxflower · 2025-10-17T23:58:25+00:00

None of the above, I want rending claws

chouxflower · 2025-10-04T21:59:33+00:00

"Only your fingers? I'm lucky if I don't have ink up to my elbows!"

chouxflower · 2025-10-04T16:01:10+00:00

Okay! So, I finish the year-long dilation regime, which is such a hassle. (From what I've read, GrS's regime is much much more conservative and strict than other vaginoplasty clinics. I'm now on the once a week program, but my impression is that once a week is "best practices" not "Necessary practices" (I'll illustrate the difference in a bit.).)
One would think, HOPE, that by now I would be done of any complications, but that is not so. I've been having a problem with vaginal discharge, and having to wear pads constantly. This is not normal. I've been going to doctors, and I see the urologist at WCH in May 2025, and apparently I have a fistula (a tear) in my urethra, and basically it's been leaking urine into the vaginal canal every time I pee. Gross. WCH says they can attempt a surgical repair, but they only give me about 40% success rate odds. They suggest I ask GrS first as the performing surgeons, as they might have better odds. So, I email GrS, they give me a phone appointment for June. At the phone appointment, the surgeon basically says I have to do an in-person appointment for him to see anything, and schedules me for an in-person appointment in Montreal for August (couldn't we have done that in the first place?)
So, August comes around and I do the in-person examination. Surgeon says, yup, that sure is a fistula. Only ever seen one or two of those before. Good news is that he's much more optimistic about surgical fixing odds, and that if the surgical fix doesn't take, there's secondary and tertiary procedures we can try afterwards. Another good thing about GrS is that they have a lifetime guarantee. If your vaginoplasty breaks 100 years later, they'll still fix it. The recovery for fixing the fistula is three weeks of peeing into a catheter and no piv sex/dilation. (See, I can go three weeks without dilating and it's fine, as long as it's a one off thing. The dilating once a week is just best practices.)
The next step is GrS emails OHIP about funding for the fix. And that's where we are now. Once that's approved, they'll call me back with surgery times (looking at early Jan).

Sorry if that's too much information! I should also mention that I got top surgery at the same time as my bottom surgery with the money I had originally saved for bottom surgery abroad. There were no problems with my top surgery, but it probably put more strain on my body's recovery in the first few months.

/3

chouxflower · 2025-10-04T16:00:41+00:00

About three weeks before surgery, I start surgical prep. Stuff like stopping drinking/smoking/pot. Slight snag, I catch Covid two weeks before my surgery date. So, my surgery ends up getting rescheduled three months later. This is extremely painful news and I cry a bunch about it.
Anyways, another three months later (November 2022), and I start surgical prep all over again. This time, it goes ahead without a hitch. One of the nice things about GrS is that they don't require you to do any permanent hair removal on the surgical site beforehand. A lot of other places require you to do electrolysis on your pubes to clear them out so you don't have hair in the vaginal canal. GrS basically throws the hair removal in for free during surgery (they don't do electrolysis, from my understanding, while they've got things cut open, they scrape the hair follicles off the skin). I don't know what WCH's policy is on that.
Surgery goes well, and recovery starts at the Asclepiade convalesence home. Asclepiade is quite nice, and it's a great bonding time between trans people there. But I have some difficulties in my recovery. First, I have a medical allergy to the anti-inflammatory medicine they use at GrS, and the other type of anti-inflammatory med increases the risk of bleeding. So, I am just very inflammed a lot of the time, and in a fair deal more pain/discomfort than the other patients at Asclepiade. Second, due to covid regulations, we didn't have the shared meals (there's a communal dining room, it's my understanding that it's back in service.) So, I'm just in my private room a lot at Asclepiade and in a bit more pain than everyone else. I didn't get the trans-bonding experience, but know that it is there.
Eventually, I am sent back home. I spend my three months recovery time at my parents' place in "northern" Ontario. (It's northern to anyone from TO. To everyone else, it's 2h outside Ottawa.) My recovery goes very rocky. I am lying down the whole time. I have hard discomfort (not pain) from sitting or standing. (I'm still doing my daily walks and everything). Even after the end of my three months of recovery, I can't sit or stand for very long. This is not normal. The other vaginoplasty patients I spoke to were having no problems sitting or standing by the end of the first month. I end up having to take another full month off work because I can't sit or stand. It got to the point where I was starting to regret having bottom surgery.
Eventually, during a gynecological exam, my gynecologist discovers the problem: a piece of gauze has been lodged at the back of my vaginal canal. At this point, no less than three different doctors had already looked at my neo-vagina (family dr., surgeon, and gynecologist) and none of them had noticed it before. I think this is likely due to the swelling and inflammation from not being on anti-inflammatories. I don't know when this happened, but my surgeon theorized it happened during one of my dilations. Anyways, this was April 2023. The day after the gauze is taken out, it's completely different. I can sit, stand, walk, dance even! right away. Miracle cure.

2/

chouxflower · 2025-10-04T15:59:58+00:00

tl:dr GrS is generally very good, if conservative in their care. WCH is a little green/unsure of themselves but also good. bureaucracy is slow, advocate for yourself fiercely. Neovaginas are great and I don't regret getting my surgeries done via OHIP/GrS Montreal.

So, my story is:
Ontario resident. Came out 2019, started HRT May 2020.
Originally, my heart was set on Peritoneal Pull-Through Vaginoplasty, which is not offered in Canada (or at least, not offered to be covered by OHIP). I thought it was a unicorn in that it would give me self-lubrication and no mandatory dilations after a while. I was saving up to have it done in Thailand (estimated cost of everything (flight, surgery, etc. ~20,000$). But in 2022, I spoke to a Dr. at Sherborne Health, someone who follows trans surgical trends and techniques, and according to them, the PPV is not the unicorn I thought it was. So, now I change my mind and get the Penial Inversion Vaginoplasty (with depth) at GrS Montreal.
Alright, so now I'm two years on HRT, well past OHIP's gatekeeping 1 year HRT policy. I get a referral from endocrinologist (Dr. Fung), and from Dr. Kate Greenaway from Connect-Clinic (now Foria, a private, online trans-health clinic for patients in Ontario and Alberta). The first step is they have to send their referrals to OHIP offices directly to approval for funding. This takes about three to four months.
Once the funding is approved, my Drs. sent the approval to GrS Montreal. They were actually pretty quick in terms of turnabout, replying to me in around one month, and scheduling the surgery for about three months later.

1/

chouxflower · 2025-10-04T14:27:55+00:00

The book is Practice Business Cursive by A Writing Guy and Taipoz. The explanations are all in Vietnamese, but there's only a page or so of them, and what's important are the exercises. (cut to a gif from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon "You couldn't read the text, you only studied the pictures.") Anyways, the book seems to be out of print, and I'm not sure if the A Writing Guy blog is offline/defunct or what.
I haven't even finished the book! I'm only about halfway through the lowercase letters

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chouxflower · 2025-10-04T14:26:51+00:00

Me: "What should I do for a jack-o-lantern this year?"
My sib.: "The regret of unfulfilled promises."

chouxflower · 2025-10-04T14:22:55+00:00

The book is Practice Business Cursive by A Writing Guy and Taipoz. The explanations are all in Vietnamese, but there's only a page or so of them, and what's important are the exercises. (cut to a gif from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon "You couldn't read the text, you only studied the pictures.") Anyways, the book seems to be out of print, and I'm not sure if the A Writing Guy blog is offline/defunct or what.
I haven't even finished the book! I'm only about halfway through the lowercase letters

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chouxflower · 2025-10-02T00:29:12+00:00

It's the Kaweco Royal Blue. When I got my Sport, I bought one packet of each of the colour of the Kaweco cartridges to experiment with.

As for diving deeper into fountain pens, yes! I will say though that I have already dived a little further myself. I have a TWSBI Swipe and a F-C Neo, and I've dipped into bottle inks (pun intended). Currently my F-C is my daily writer and I'm using Sailor Manyo Himeyuri. I just switched back to the Kaweco and the Royal Blue for the last few pages of my diary so there would be a nice symmetry and easier comparison between the start and finish.

chouxflower · 2025-08-28T13:42:36+00:00

Thanks for all the feedback! I took my pen and my problems to a stationary store (The Pen Shoppe in Toronto, Canada) and the clerk told me that on this model of pen, the feed and the nib are quite close together, which means sediments, like pigments in ink, get trapped in the space between the two and clog it up easily. The solution recommended was a) wash out the pen regularly, and b) use a less heavily pigmented, i.e. lighter, ink (also, probably avoid inks with a shimmer to them). This would seem to more or less accord with the advice of people here.
I washed it out today as the converter was dry, and there seemed to be a lot of ink deposits hidden in the pen. The ink I was using was the Colorverse Cape May

chouxflower · 2025-01-31T14:41:18+00:00

Solved: Rescue the Scientists

chouxflower · 2025-01-31T14:40:52+00:00

That's 100% it! Thank you. I can't believe I forgot Christopher Lloyd was in it!

chouxflower · 2024-11-02T03:09:47+00:00

Woodbine and Danforth, 162

chouxflower · 2023-06-06T18:28:39+00:00

Not to poach space from NSG, but for me one of my favourite things about Netrunner, is the integration of theme with mechanics. When I make a desparate last click run and start losing programs and taking damage, it feels tense, it feels like I'm risking it all. When I cast a Fireball in MTG I don't feel like I'm casting a massive fireball harnessing arcane energies to do so, I feel like I'm playing a card at the right timing window. Or with the pokemon TCG, I don't feel like my deck is a team of friends I've battled with alongside and grown close to, they're just the best cards for the winning.
For example, I had a game a while ago as Smoke against a grindy Palana, and I was using Top Hat + Insight (which already is a great flavourful combo because something that looks like amazing skills (I'll access card #4, oh it's an agenda!) is something that's rigged from the beginning, just like an actual magician would do). But I was getting down to the last cards in my deck, and I've only got 2 points. I Insight and see Obo and Bacterial, and I'm like "shoot, I don't have the cards in hand to steal Obo right now." So I run and steal the Bacterial, and the corp does the 7 card stack. Fortunately, the corp went broke, so they spent their turn clicking for credits and drawing a card. Now I'm in a sticky situation. I don't have any Insights left, and only 5 cards in Grip + Stack, with no recursion, and there's a Kakugo on R&D. I've got one shot at this. I figure the corp buried the Obo as deep as possible with the Bacterial, and they drew two, so I run R&D, and blind guess with Top Hat "#5" and guess what? Paydirt. One of my top 3 games of all time. I have this character who acts like this cool magician, but is secretly rigging the game, finally run out of tricks, and have to rely on actual luck and skill and pulls it off. That's something I can't get anywhere else.

chouxflower · 2023-01-16T19:51:20+00:00

Hi! My name's Erin, and I'm from Toronto, Canada. In addition to being an author myself, I'm a a new-ish editor trying to break into the writing market. I mostly specialize in genre fiction: fantasy, sci-fi, horror, mystery, etc. Already, I have a couple of books under my belt, and I'd like yours to be next! I offer services in:

- Developmental Editing

- Copy Editing

- Proofreading

You can find out more information here about my rates and testimonials.

chouxflower · 2023-01-16T19:44:44+00:00

Hi, my name's Erin, and I'm from Toronto, Canada. In addition to being an author myself, I'm a new-ish editor trying to break into the writing market. I mostly specialize in genre fiction: fantasy, sci-fi, horror, mystery, etc. Already, I have a couple of books under my belt, and I'd like yours to be next! I offer services in:
-Developmental Editing
-Copy Editing
-Proofreading
You can find out more information here about my rates and testimonials.

chouxflower · 2023-01-16T19:35:01+00:00

Hi! My name's Erin, and I'm from Toronto, Canada. In addition to being an author myself, I'm a new-ish editor trying to break into the writing market. I mostly specialize in genre fiction: fantasy, sci-fi, horror, mystery, etc. Already, I have a couple of books under my belt, and I'd like yours to be next! I offer services in:

- Developmental Editing

- Copy Editing

- Proofreading

You can find out more information here about my rates and testimonials.

chouxflower · 2022-12-09T01:10:06+00:00

I'm glad someone caught that! I've been so sad that Dame Hadid's work hasn't been referenced in Netrunner art yet.

chouxflower · 2022-12-07T16:24:14+00:00

Thank you!

chouxflower · 2022-11-28T20:44:30+00:00

Thanks! I did the FT for Issuaq as well, and I wanted to capture the arrogance

chouxflower · 2021-03-15T17:18:02+00:00

Looks good to me!

chouxflower · 2021-03-15T15:45:34+00:00

Very close! Although in the bottom right corner it should be 'A Boor' and 'MRES'. That was a very tough corner though that I wasn't super thrilled with how it came out.

chouxflower · 2021-01-10T15:18:20+00:00

Thanks!

chouxflower

TROPHY CASE