Yeson voice feminization surgery

[barbie]

So I'm wondering how hard it is to get to Costco there. I'm thinking I might just buy some groceries and cook instead of blowing money on fast food.

There are about 10 Costco branches in Korea, but you should have a car to drive there, which is not desirable for buying small amount of groceries.  You can purchase some vegetables and other raw food even in any convenient store. More food items are available at some large stores such as E-mart or Home plus, which are like Wal-mart or Target of the U.S. You may ask the nearby locations in the hotel. Also, E-mart or Home plus are a nice place for shopping, too, as they sell many clothes and other beauty items at reasonable price and nice quality.

barbie~~

[Sunhawk]

Yes, the subway was really good, and the taxi wasn't too expensive to me, each round trip has been about 20,000 Won.

[anjaq]

You can buy veggies and meat at local markets and dont need a big supermarket. Most shops in the city seem to be small and partially on the street, but they are ok, I think. Meat is expensive though. Also European style stuff is expensive - things like sandwhich bread, sliced cheese, ham, pizza - we paid a fortune on that initially because we figured we want to be able to make sandwhiches for day trips - it is much cheaper to just buy some of the fingerfood they sell everywhere on the streets and for cooking, one probably should stick to local recipes with local ingredients

learning come hangul was fun - Whenever I was on the subway I was figuring out the dual language signs and interpreting how the signs are set up. I think I knew about half of the meanings within a week just by looking at the subway signs and could read some of the signs phonetically.

[Teslagirl]

I'm so disappointed.
Jessie offered me a cancellation for the end of May and I accepted. I even booked 11 days at the PhilHouse but then she told me that the original client had changed their mind, so now nothing until July.
It will be really difficult to get my voice into shape for when I start teaching in September and July is right in the middle of the monsoon. It's not great.

Sarah.

[iKate]

I'm so disappointed.
Jessie offered me a cancellation for the end of May and I accepted. I even booked 11 days at the PhilHouse but then she told me that the original client had changed their mind, so now nothing until July.
It will be really difficult to get my voice into shape for when I start teaching in September and July is right in the middle of the monsoon. It's not great.

Sarah.

Yeah they are busy. July is not too bad. I booked 4 months out. But I wanted to do this over the summer when my kids are not in school.

[Zoe Snow]

Had my followup appointment yesterday.  Almost missed it, I thought it was today for some reason.  My phone reminded me 10 minutes before the appointment, at which point I started freaking out and then rushed towards Yeson.  Took a taxi for the first time to get there.  Got there about 20 minutes late, but they were still able to fit me in, thankfully. 

I was told everything appears to be healing just fine.  They did the botox injection as well.  They gave me an additional 5 days worth of the medications they had started me on initially.  I don't think this was normal, they just want me to be able to kick this cold first before I go off of it. 

I saw a couple other foreigners there while I was there.  Curious if I saw someone from here while I was there.

One week down, 7 more to go.  Should be a fun time.  I'm actually looking forward to getting back home and subjecting all of my coworkers to a silent version of me.  Curious to see how they handle it.  Before I left they were asking me if I was going to learn some sign language.  I thought that was pretty funny and short sighted on their part, whats the point of me learning sign language if they don't know any themselves? 

[anjaq]

Lol, yes I thought of learning some signs languare parts too, but those that I learned , no one understood.

I foound being temporary mute a very interesting experience. I used a lot more eye contact, facial expressions and such - so the way of communication was quite different and somewhat closer and more intimate to other people. The point I got frustrated was however when I had to communicate complex issues, work related stuff for example. I had to type a lot and often people were already on the next topic when I was ready with typing. Sigh - so eventually I was glad to be able to use my voice again.

Still it was interesting

[Sunhawk]

Almost ready to go home. Follow up is this afternoon. Hope everything is good. Had a hard time not clearing my throat.

[Zoe Snow]

Almost ready to go home. Follow up is this afternoon. Hope everything is good. Had a hard time not clearing my throat.

I had similar issues while I was there, I caught a cold right after the surgery.  As long as you aren't feeling any pain, you will likely be fine. 

[buffmage5]

Nope, no pain, just some throat soreness.

[Sunhawk]

Nope, no pain, just some throat soreness.

That was strange. I was supposed to be logged in with my forum account.

[Sunhawk]

Yay, everything looks good. Now wait for an injection and then back to the hotel.

[Cadence Jean]

Glad to hear you're doing well, Sunhawk! What does the bottox injection do?

[Sunhawk]

Thanks.

It is intended to treat tremor. How Dr. Kim expanded it to me, it relaxes the muscles that control the vocal folds and gives your brain time to get used to the new arrangement and eliminate the tremor.

[Jennygirl]

Thanks.

It is intended to treat tremor. How Dr. Kim expanded it to me, it relaxes the muscles that control the vocal folds and gives your brain time to get used to the new arrangement and eliminate the tremor.

Wow so he said the botox can actually cure the tremor? Maybe he has found something new.

When I asked him about it (after my surgery 2 years ago), he said the botox would need to be repeated every 3 months in order to keep the benefit of treating the tremor. As in, only a temporary bandaid.

I definitely have a tremor, but luckily it's not enough to affect my voice in a way that limits my passability. If I was trying to be a singer, though, I might consider keeping up with the injections.

Over the past year my voice has relaxed quite a bit and volume has returned, so maybe tremor is indeed sorting itself out somewhat. My range has dropped slightly, too (by two wholetones) but it feels like that is mostly due to discontinuing the vocal exercises that I have lost some of my upper upper range. Upper range limit is still higher than it was before the surgery

[Sunhawk]

Well, thinking about it, I don't think he said "eliminate". But tremor was mentioned many times in connection with the botox injection. That and the"remapping" of control of my vocal folds, which is what I construed as the eliminate part.

So that was the way I interrupted what he was telling me.

[anjaq]

As I understood it when Dr Kim explained it to me: I have a minor tremor. His approach would be to use Botox to temporarily reduce it, thereby allowing my brain to train itself to use the voice without the tremor and with some luck it might stick. He was telling me that I might need another botox injection after it has worn off, but more likely it would be enough to use the pills he prescribed for 3 months, they seem to have a similar effect. I should train the voice in that time to get used to the new voice. My thoughts there are, that the long term misuse of my voice to make it sound more feminine has lead to that tremor and since the source of it is gone now, I just have to unlearn the bad neural patterns.

I still wonder though if my voice is better now than without the botox or if it will be better when the botox is gone. My voice therapist thinks that I will gain more abilities with my voice once I can use all the muscles again

Over the past year my voice has relaxed quite a bit and volume has returned, so maybe tremor is indeed sorting itself out somewhat. My range has dropped slightly, too (by two wholetones) but it feels like that is mostly due to discontinuing the vocal exercises that I have lost some of my upper upper range. Upper range limit is still higher than it was before the surgery

Thats very cool. My upper limit is now about two whole tones lower than pre op, but it was admittedly very crazy high before the surgery, so the loss is not so tragic (dropped from about 900-something Hz to 760 Hz as of 11 weeks post op). Jenny - how long did it take you before you reached the highest upper range and surpassed the pre op range?
Did your average or comfortable pitch still change in the long run or was it really finished after the 6 or 9 month mark?

[ly]

I've been lurking on Susans for about 5 years now and finally decided to get an account!

I finally had my VFS surgery at Yeson yesterday (May 21 2015). Thank you Jenny for starting this thread (and all the others who participated) for helping people like me find out about it! <3

The people at Yeson were great although there was a slight language barrier. On the consult day, we did many tests with a lot of equipment: flexible nasal endoscopy, rigid stroboscopy, video recording of rainbow passage, speaking into sm48, oral air pressure test with pneumotach mask and straw (Phonatory Aerodynamic System), blood test, ekg, x-ray. Doing all these tests made me feel more confident that they knew well what they were doing.

I was surprised at how little pain there was. When I went into the surgery room, Dr. Kim and the anesthesiologist tapped on my shoulder and told me it would be okay. They put the anaesthetic mask on my and told me to breathe deeply twice. Next thing I knew, I woke up in the recovery bed. I only felt a bit of tongue and throat soreness.

This was how the surgery day went:

• 8:00 - arrive, sign forms and get ready
• 10ish - surgery
• 12 - woke up on recovery bed
• 12:40 - water
• 14:40 - soup (tasted great)
• 15:20 - ice cream
• 17:00 - checkup to see how things went
• 17:30 - go home

There was also another girl getting surgery that day too (for VFS also, I suspect, due to our almost-identical schedules and followup day). I wish I could've said hi to her somehow (maybe she reads this).

Dr. Kim also said I had a lot of vocal tremors which prevented me from producing good resonance and clear formants. He said that with botox, it would relax my vocal folds so that my brain adapts to the new way of speaking without tremors. After the effects of botox wears out in 3-4 months, he says he will get a voice sample from me and see whether I should get more botox or just take a medication that reduces vocal tremors. From what I understand that he said, it's mostly for retraining the brain.

Also, on the first day after surgery back at the hotel, my sister woke up and startled me. I tried to say something but my throat just tightened and nothing came out. I hope I didn't break anything .. eek.

[anjaq]

Hehe - sounds just like how I remember it - including the attempts to speak on the first morning being still half awake. I actually did say a few words, but if there is no big pain now, it did not break anything. I panicked and asked Jessie in an email but she said this happens to many patients, just take care not to repeat it.

[ly]

Ok thanks for the reassurance anjaq I also tried to say something after waking up on the recovery bed but I was fine in the checkup after. It seems like something that happens to most people.