I had 3 hernia operations last week at Shouldice (Monday, Wednesday and Friday). Shouldice is the best IN THE WORLD for hernia operations. My room mate (all rooms semi-private - 2/room) came from Maui for his operation. An average hospital surgeon does 20-30 hernia operations a year. An average Shouldice surgeon does 600-800 hernia operations a year. Guess who knows their business best. After each surgery, you rest in bed for 5 hrs, then do limited sitting up and walking around. Meals are brought to your room. The next day, you are up and taking walks through their beautiful huge property. They give you pain meds 5 times a day, so the pain really isn't that bad at all. Just don't cough or sneeze and getting in and out of bed without pain, requires a brief education. All the staff are amazing. Friendly and helpful in every way. The meals are NOT regular hospital food. They are delicious and healthy. Roast beef, chicken, salmon just to name a few. I love the 9pm snack of cakes, pastries, butter tarts and soft gooey chocolate chip cookies. Of course there is tons of fresh fruit for those avoiding sweets. You meet a lot of patients who quickly become friends and you always have someone to go for a walk with or sit and chat. My only complaints - the mattresses are quite firm (hard), but I guess this makes it easier to get in and out of bed, because you have to push and roll out of bed to feel little pain. And on each of the 2 patient floors there is a lounge with a big screen TV and they get monopolized by the sportsoholics. Not being a sports fan myself, I got little opportunity to watch anything on TV. I checked in on a Sunday and was released the following Monday. It is now Wednesday and I have absolutely no pain at all except a bit when I cough or sneeze or poop. Those actions use the muscles that were operated on and give you some pain. I can't shower for a week, and my focus is to keep my 3 five inch incisions clean so they don't get infected. I wear suspenders on my pants so I don't have a belt or elastic waistband pushing on my cuts. No underpants as well. Just a long clean undershirt that nicely covers the operation area and a regular shirt on top. If you have a hernia, Shouldice is the only place to consider. They do it right. There were 3 patients there that I met that were there to get hospital operations fixed. They had more difficult surgeries at Shouldice, but the surgeons did fix them up. read more