So, the 4 week resting period was over at the end of last week and I was trying out a few sentences since then. Pitch certainly has gone up a bit, but not by fas as much as is the goal, which is not uncommon, I was told by Dr Kim that in my case it should reach the goal by the end of the 4th month, so that is a while. Clearly the lower notes are gone as is the timbre that goes with it even in the higher notes. So one goal reached is already that I cannot go really low anymore. My guess would be that about 130 Hz is the lower limit (before it was 80 Hz). The voice is softer, has a different quality, is more naturally feminine - this is probably in part because of the desired changes but also in part because of the Botox and the breathiness that comes from being so early in the recovery. I will see how this develops. What I noticed is that it is incredibly easy to go up in pitch, when I tried my first sentences, I accidentially went in a very high pitch for some intonations because I was doing what I was used to do and the same amount of muscle tension cause my voice to go way higher than I was used to. Still, relaxed pitch is at maybe 150 Hz, so that is about 20 Hz higher than my pre op relaxed trained voice and about 40 Hz higher than my bottom end "male" voice. So I kind of hope it will go up in the 180-200 Hz range as would be predicted. So far, I am impressed for being just 4 weeks post op, this is already very good, I think. Feedback from others varied a bit, some said it is great and undeniably feminine, others said that it is in part feminine but in parts it is more androgynous sounding or even sometimes male sounding. I guess this is less about pitch or timbre but more about the way I speak and this is a bit restricted now. Some of the old tricks dont work anymore and it will be a bit of a learning process to feminize the sound of the voice in terms or resonance and intonations again, I also lacked some in these areas, so I hope that with pitch and timbre out of the way, I have more freedom and relaxation to improve my prosody.
I can say a few sentences, then I have to make along break, drink a lot of water always , but if I do that, I can probably do 50-100 sentences a day today, although I suspect this may have been a bit much, since I was pretty hoarse and weak at the end, so I will try to keep it below that in the next days.
3.5 weeks until I should be able to use my voice fully again and to start with voice exercises 5x a day and voice therapy 1-2x a week and explore the abilities of my new voice.
