Surgery with Dr. Haben on Dec, 16th

[Lara1969]

My stitches came out today, sugery was six days before . This is how it looks:



Healing is good, the web already formed. That is what he said. I will try to rest my voice till beginning of next year. Three weeks later I will see my ENT. He measured my range and fundamental frequencies before and is interested to see it will change.

I am so happy! I can also resume nmy training in a few days. One week without any sports is hard for me.

Overall it bis nearly a pain free surgery. The day after I felt discomfort because of the swelling but I currently I feel is very seldom. Until now he and the staff were very friendly and answered all questions I had. Also the staff in the hospital were very kind.

I have the feeling that drinking warm tea helps alot with swelling. I prefer camomille and grean tea. He did not recommend avoiding juice to me. I asked him If I can continue drinking orange juice in the morning and evening.

[Lara1969]

I am allowed to do sports this week, especially jogging and training in a gym. I love sports but I am not sure if it is really helpful for recovery to start early. I know that after surgery is helps to get up early and I never stopped for a longer except after GRS which took me out for six weeks.

[Elaine S]

Lara:

Glad to hear you are mending well and it looks like the swelling has subsided quite well for you already. Today is the 2 week mark for me, I can really relate to what you write .

I know the feeling about not being able to exercise. The urge is strong but, it will have to wait for a while to get back into cycling and floor work another month and a half.

Be safe and hope you have a nice holiday season.

Elaine

[anjaq]

That sounds all pretty good. It will be interesting to see what your ENTs and voice therapists in Germany will say
It was kind of funny this week. My voice therapist told me that she was talking to a voice specialist in a clinic here about this topic and that doctor was telling her how much she disliked this sort of surgery - glottoplasty - because it is so bad for the patients. She was telling her then that she has to say that it depends on the surgeon and the patients dedication to get a good voice and she experienced with me that the surgery can be a very good success  

[Lara1969]

I know,  most speech therapists and ENT vote against such a surgery.  They are not completely wrong. If you have surgery here your voice is broken in almost all cases. The good voices still sound thin and hoarse. The worser ones sound still male.

I am still resting my voice, I plan to do a complete voice rest of 2,5 weeks. But than I have to go back to work. But ge said four weeks voice rest will help revover faster but one week is enough and I will not damage the result even when coughing.  I have two toddlers and it is nearly impossible to stay two weeks without cold. They are bringing back every possible cold virus from Kindergarden which exist on this planet.  I will resume sports this week.
I will record my voice than.

[anjaq]

I know,  most speech therapists and ENT vote against such a surgery.  They are not completely wrong. If you have surgery here your voice is broken in almost all cases. The good voices still sound thin and hoarse. The worser ones sound still male.

Sadly that seems to be true. It is incerdibly hard to get voice samples here, I can only assume that people are either unhappy about it and do not want others to hear it, or there are some good ones who just want to be left alone and be stealth? I heard one good result lately and about 3 or 4 bad ones. So there seem to be a few good ones around in Germany as well, but it seems to be a gamble. I know that some are not happy with Dr Haben or Dr Kim either, but the chance/risk ratio seems to be reversed, compared to Germany.

[Lara1969]

So after two weeks the scar is okay:



My voice is not okay. Very thin, raspy voice. I felt that I have to speak different. It seems to me the "triple" changed a lot. With adapting the way I speak I am able to get something out every time I need my voice (my twins are 1,5yr old and I definitly need my voice!). I am still very quit and my pitch is very high. I did not made a measurement. I think it does not make any sense before I hit the four weeks mark. I know that I am not able to bring out any low noises. That is a result which I always wanted.

I have to return to work tomorrow. I still want to use my voice on rare occassions. My secretary has to speak for me 

I did not contacted Dr. Haben. End of January I have an appointment with my ENT. Then I will see where I am standing regarding my voice. Currently I am not nervous. I know that my healing was good, I do not smoke nor drink alcohol. I drink a lot of hot camomille tea which always helps in short term. And I resumed sports. As far as I can say without side effects. So I have to wait, resume speech therapie and start Lax Vox again.
My only concern is my date next week. I hope I can at least say somethink, he is an interesting man. 

[Lara1969]

This is my voice 4 weeks post op in the evening after speaking like on a normal day:

http://vocaroo.com/i/s18DOkc1Caff

It is what I exspected but I hoped to be further in my development.

My scar is hard to see. I think it will look nice in half an year.

[jollyjoy]

Sounds better than mine at 4 months! There's still a lot of hoarseness, hopefully that I will diminish for you over the next few months.

[Lara1969]

I started with Lax Vox which helped. I spoke a lot today and it worked. Had a wonderful date with a fantastic man. 

[jollyjoy]

What is Lax Vox? I've never heard of this. Can it permanently get rid of hoarseness, or is this a temporary fix?

I started with Lax Vox which helped. I spoke a lot today and it worked. Had a wonderful date with a fantastic man. 

[iKate]

I know,  most speech therapists and ENT vote against such a surgery.  They are not completely wrong. If you have surgery here your voice is broken in almost all cases. The good voices still sound thin and hoarse. The worser ones sound still male.

You mean in Germany or in general?

[Lara1969]

Here is the English website about lax vox:
http://www.laxvox.com/eng/index.html

It definitly helps against hoarseness. I strongly recommend it for everyone based on my personal experience.

[Lara1969]

You mean in Germany or in general?

Yes I mean in Germany.

[anjaq]

I would say not only in Germany but this applies to most other countries as well, but there are a few exceptional surgeons who can do it - they happen to be not in Germany, but that does not imply the reverse - that is only german voice surgeons who produce bad results

[anjaq]

This is my voice 4 weeks post op in the evening after speaking like on a normal day:

Wow, thats still pretty damaged. Are you sure it is a good idea to already talk like on a normal day? I would rather rest the voice more and try to let it heal more, I guess...
I followed the 4 week total voice rest rule of Dr Kim and after 4 weeks I was already doing rather ok
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1CcMqIrsS6l
although of course that meant not to use the voice for more than a few sentences a day at first. It seems to make sense to me though to be gentle with the voice at first...

P.S.: The recoring is kind of funny because its literally on the first day of speaking again and I had not yet regained control over my pitch again and so it was all over the place - LOL

[iKate]

Yes I mean in Germany.

I agree with you and Anja on this because I know someone who had voice surgery in NYC and she completely lost her voice. She is basically almost all air now. She doesn't get called sir but she can't really talk all that much. I don't know what procedure she had but she was warning me about voice surgery.

This is why I didn't just go to any surgeon. One with proven results was important to me.

[anjaq]

Yes - I heard some voices from surgeons in Germany and some of them were incredibly hoarse and breathy, others too high pitched or lacking modulation (probably CTA method). Someone in Austria had a VFS and Botox and could not speak at all for over a year - basically she thought she has lost her voice , but then apparently some of it came back eventually.
Horror stories... so wherever you go, be sure the surgeon is top notch in this area - the surgery is in principle easy to be done, but in reality it takes more than to just stitch up the vocal folds and cross your fingers...

[Lara1969]

The experience of the surgeon is extremly important. And there are only few surgeons which do have lot of experience. The technique plays also an important role. I think Dr. Kim and Dr. Haben both use an advanced method in detail.

My focal folds look great said my ENT doc. It is just swollen alot. Maybe his surgery technique causes the excessive swelling. Speaking should not cause any damage now. It is still interesting to explore my new voice. Now I am at approx 180Hz when speaking in low pitch. That is really amazing. I cannot go much deeper now. But I can comfortable speak at 250Hz or higher. My upper limit is above 450 or 500Hz, I am not sure. And the break between chest and head voice is gone.

[anjaq]

I think the CTA eliminates the break of registers because it basically turns off one of the two muscles doing the voice and the point where those muscles basically fight for control over the voice is where the voice break occurs. So in a way thats a benefit of the CTA technique, I believe.