Yeson voice feminization surgery 2.0

[Dena]

However more healing has to come, I hope. I am still sounding a bit husky and if I have a conversation over a longer time, like 1-2 hours in the car while driving, my voice can give up completely. I had that happen yesterday. It recovered after half an hour of being silent , drinking a lot, talking some throat pastilles - but the rest of the evening, I had a bit of a sore throat - I hope this will eventually pass.

I don't know how strong your old voice was, but the fact that your voice was sore after overusing it indicates you may be pushing it beyond what it is capable of. In a non surgical voice over time this will result in damage. If the overuse is not extensive, keeping the voice in check will allow the voice to heal. Continued misuse will result in damage to the voice that may requires surgery to correct. This is one of the procedures Dr Haben performs on professional singers and I think one of the girls here had this done to her voice in addition to the feminization.

What scares me a bit is how soft my voice currently is at about 2.5 weeks after surgery. My two primary request were a bump in pitch and a voice that could project. I work in noise and with people how have failing hearing so I need to turn up the volume in order to get the message out. I don't need to yell and I haven't done it as a female. I hope as the voice heals I get the volume back that I once had.

[anjaq]

Well I did have some voice issues before the surgery due to the misuse in the years before. But I could, after a year of voice therapy, talk for prolonged periods of time again without overstraining it. In this situation it was not a tough environment. It was in a car, so it was not really silent, but I used regular speaking loudness and it was a dialoque with breaks, so nothing special. I guess the voice was a bit damaged from the hiking and breathing a lot through the mouth while doing so plus a bit of stress from driving a lot and sleeping a bit less. I was a bit surprised that now, nearing half a year post op, I  still would have to limit my conversations to maybe an hour or two to ensure not overtraining my voice. Maybe I am doing something wrong - using a bad phonation pattern, too low pitch, too much resonance control - something that makes the voice tire faster...

[Dena]

My big issue with  my trained voice was where I needed to be in pitch was at the upper end of my working range and I knew I couldn't get the volume of inflection without pushing my voice way beyond it's limits. My sweet spot was much lower as you commented about in the past. Neither the mouth or falsetto had a sweet spot high enough to get above 170 to 180 hz. I still have far to much swelling but already I can tell both the mouth and falsetto have moved up a range. they still need to move another 20-30 hz to get them where they need to be but I still have another month before I can really expect anything approaching my final voice.

You need to work up and down your range and find out where your voice is the strongest. The spot should be on the bottom end of the range but a bit above the hard bottom. While my male voice could go as low as 80hz, I had to push it a bit to hit that. I don't know what my voice normally used to be but I suspect it was between 90 and 100 hz where the voice was comfortable to use.

In training our voices, we forget these natural limits and become like singers who move our voice to where the music leads us. If we want a comfortable speaking voice, we need to go back to basics and learn where our voice naturally falls and use that voice.

[anjaq]

You need to work up and down your range and find out where your voice is the strongest. The spot should be on the bottom end of the range but a bit above the hard bottom. While my male voice could go as low as 80hz, I had to push it a bit to hit that. I don't know what my voice normally used to be but I suspect it was between 90 and 100 hz where the voice was comfortable to use.

In training our voices, we forget these natural limits and become like singers who move our voice to where the music leads us. If we want a comfortable speaking voice, we need to go back to basics and learn where our voice naturally falls and use that voice.

Well, I guess its different post op for me at least. My lowest pitch pre op was also about 80 Hz, my "male voice" probably was around 110-120 Hz, my relaxed voice pre op was however 140 Hz, tweaking it a bit, I could do 160 Hz without effort. Anything above was costing effort.
Post op now my lowest pitch is 120 Hz, I can comfortably do a 130 Hz note if I want to, when I speak relaxed, I think I am at about 160 Hz, doing a bit of effort I am at 180 Hz, "singing" for the Yeson exercises will give me a relaxed start at 190 Hz, sometimes 200 Hz.

If I would take my lower pitch end and add some Hz to it and use this, I would be flat in the male range. Its still about 50 Hz to get from those 120 Hz to the lower end of the female range... so I think this may not be the right way to determine a good pitch for me. I suspect the 180-200 Hz range is where I should be best...

[Dena]

Pulling out my old information
Lowest usable note 80Hz, male speaking voice was above that.
Mouth voice 130-196Hz
Falsetto voice 155-237Hz
Whistler voice 250-490Hz

Now the doctor promised me a 60hz push on the mouth voice and said I might have as much as 80hz depending on the healing. That puts my female voice around 190 to 210 if everything works as advertised. The interesting thing is I found it very easy to transition to the falsetto range and did it almost by accident at around 250hz. My voice then went up to almost 400hz indicating the push isn't linear. As I said, I also have seen my mouth voice drop below 160hz.
I have done very limited testing because I don't want to damage anything and the voice is still real unstable.
My speaking voice today seem to be about 160hz but I can still feel the swelling as it feels like I have a really bad head cold. Better numbers will have to wait a month or two for the rest of the swelling to go down, for the suture to dissolve and for me to get used to controlling the new voice.

Having a pitch meter app on my cell phone was one of the best apps I ever bought. Any time I need to use my voice and I want to gather information, out comes my cell phone. I learned a great deal about my voice just through normal conversation. The one I use is called Pitch Lab.

[iKate]

Tonight's "I am Cait" shows Jenny's video...

[Jennygirl]

They contacted me about a month ago asking if they could use it, I gave them clearance. I have to go check it out! Awesome!

[iKate]

I kinda figured prior permission was in order. Good to know. Jenny, you're famous!

[Jennygirl]

Gah I am dying to see it now

Guess I'll have to wait a day or two! Seems like they did a good job with it, though? A few friends have contacted me in excitement!

[iKate]

Gah I am dying to see it now

Guess I'll have to wait a day or two! Seems like they did a good job with it, though? A few friends have contacted me in excitement!

I haven't seen it but from what I gather, they were showing it to her as an example of a woman who trained her voice. That is a complete misrepresentation because we all know you had surgery. If they wanted to show someone with a voice achieved through training alone, they would be better off showing Andrea James or Calpernia Addams.

But... Since I work in the industry, I know that television is not reality, even so-called "reality" shows. A good friend of mine used to edit shows like TAR and he said most of the stuff ended up on the cutting room floor because it was so boring and a lot of stuff was "sexed up" because it made for good TV.

It makes me wonder though, if Jenner has all that money, why didn't she get VFS? The trachea shave is the only logical reason I can think of since it tends to complicate things.

[Dena]

My take on it is that Jenner's voice isn't really all that low and hasn't been a priority up to now. We all have different dysphoria and that tends to determine our surgical priority. Everybody needs to follow a basic rule with surgeries and that is proper spacing. Our voice surgery has a 3 month wait time before any more elective surgery. FFS surgery which Jenner has had, has a much longer waiting period. I have heard from a indirect unreliable source that Jenner had SRS. I doubt that story because it would mean the year cross living rule was violated, but if the story were true, SRS would have at least a 6 month waiting period before elective surgery. While I had a very small amount of paper work in Dr Haban's office, the paper work did include surgical information. It was a little funny when I saw the question asking when I had SRS because it was my last surgery 33 years ago. I suspect Dr Haban operates on people younger that the time from my last surgery.

[iKate]

I have heard from a indirect unreliable source that Jenner had SRS.

I doubt that story because it would mean the year cross living rule was violated, but if the story were true, SRS would have at least a 6 month waiting period before elective surgery.

She said that she didn't but she would think of it down the line. She had FFS and BA and a trach shave. That's about it.

She did say that she had the two required referrals. This was in the interview with Diane Sawyer. My educated guess is that she got them because she is a celebrity and going out in the public eye before she is ready to fully transition would have been disastrous. You can see from the Paparazzi and media circus in general what was happening. So she more or less had to have her 1 year RLE in private.

Now that she's supposedly dating Candis Cayne (per rumors) I don't know if she will just stay non-op.

While I had a very small amount of paper work in Dr Haban's office, the paper work did include surgical information. It was a little funny when I saw the question asking when I had SRS because it was my last surgery 33 years ago. I suspect Dr Haban operates on people younger that the time from my last surgery.

Dr Kim's paperwork asked about previous surgeries and issues with anesthesia as well and mentioned 2 month spacing. Next one I'm having is likely FFS but that's about a year away at least.

[Dana88]

I haven't seen it but from what I gather, they were showing it to her as an example of a woman who trained her voice. That is a complete misrepresentation because we all know you had surgery. If they wanted to show someone with a voice achieved through training alone, they would be better off showing Andrea James or Calpernia Addams.

But... Since I work in the industry, I know that television is not reality, even so-called "reality" shows. A good friend of mine used to edit shows like TAR and he said most of the stuff ended up on the cutting room floor because it was so boring and a lot of stuff was "sexed up" because it made for good TV.

It makes me wonder though, if Jenner has all that money, why didn't she get VFS? The trachea shave is the only logical reason I can think of since it tends to complicate things.

Yup. That's exactly what happened. They used Jenny's video as an example of what voice training can do. And I was like... Ummmmm. I wonder if maybe Yeson didn't give permission to publicize their clinic on the show?

[Jennygirl]

Interesting... Very interesting. Indeed it was a lot of (or perhaps mostly) training, but it was training made possible by surgical modification of the length of the vocal chords. I'm surprised they left that out! They must have consciously done it because all my videos have "surgery" in the title.

Very interesting!

[iKate]

And my voice has had basically zero training, but has had the surgery and passes everywhere without question.

I actually am excited for month 2 because Jessie said that it would get even better with training.

[Dena]

IKate, I don't know where it came from but you are using the same speech pattern you had with the male voice. It was an expressive male speech pattern but when the pitch went up it transformed to a very feminine sounding voice. Training wasn't required in your case but have heard others on this site who had a monotone male speech pattern that didn't transform after the surgery. In my opinion the only thing you could do to improve the voice with training is to use a bit more pitch change when speaking. Be careful not to get carried away with it because you only need a small amount to liven up the voice but that may be one of the best out of the box voices we will ever hear around here.

I only hope that after years of being confined by the limits of my old voice I am able to work enough of what I know in to my voice so I can approach what you have.

[iKate]

Yes, my speech patterns are feminine and got me bullied around in school quite a lot. My dad used to also scold me for answering the phone in a sing-songy voice. Oh well!

[iKate]

I watched it. It's online now on the E! website for viewers in the United States. Sign in with a TV provider is required.

The clip with Jenny is at 4:17. It's the 7 month video.

They talk about surgery after, around the 6 minute mark.

So I think Caitlyn will probably be headed for surgery soon, I think. Whether she chooses Dr Kim or Dr Haben is anyone's guess.

[Dena]

There are a few other options out there but I suspect it's going to be Dr. Kim because it took me a good deal of digging to come up with Dr. Haben. My order of discovery was Portland, Dr. Kim and then through Susan's I found Dr Haben. Had Portland been my only option, I would have passed on surgery because the post surgical voices didn't sound right to my ear. Dr. Kim's voice sound good but Korea is a long way off and I really like to have options to chose from so I went looking for another option.
As high as Jenner's voice is, therapy should work well but I think Dr. Kim or Dr. Haben would both be able to do a good job with that voice.

A little side note, when Jenner first came out and before I found Susan's place, I fired off an offer of help to Jenner. I never received a response and I never expected one but Jenner appears to have different support structure, most likely provided through her doctors. Jenner had dyslexia so I suspect she spends little if any time on the web or even reading fan mail. If she is aware of us, it would most likely be as the result of somebody else pointing us out.

[Jennygirl]

Ahhh so neat! I got goosebumps!