VFS part 2 with Dr. Haben hopefully sometime this year

[GeekGirl]

Hi everyone!

So I believe I was one of Dr. Haben's first VFS patients as I've had my procedure with him in July 2013. At the time, I'm pretty sure there were no sutures done on my vocal chords. He used a laser to zap the lower part of the vocal folds and the webbing was supposed to form on its own (I don't think he used sutures at all at the time). My pitch did not change, so I'm one of the unsuccessful patients. I had the trachea shave done by him and he also did the part where the two flaps are pulled and tightened (the CTA). I would've thought that even with the webbing not forming, the CTA alone would've raised my voice a tad, but this was not the case. He offered to redo the surgery at the cost of hospital and hotel stay fees, which amounts to a bit over $2k. I would like to do this sometime this summer, but to complicate matters...

I'm a successful Bikram Yoga instructor with a really powerful voice. To be out for a month or more would be pretty bad for me. Still, I've always been self-conscious about my voice and I usually get sirred a lot over the phone unless the other person on the phone sees some record with me saying I'm female (in a doctor's office, for example).

I'm excited that Dr. Haben now does his procedure with sutures. It just makes a lot more sense to me to do it this way. Anyways, I'm listening to all the new voice samples from various people. Everyone sounds pretty good to great. At the time I did the surgery, there was only one voice sample, so I took a chance at the time.

[Dena]

Welcome to Susan's Place. I did a fair amount of studying the voice surgeries before I had Dr Haben work on mine and I am a bit surprised the the surgery has evolved that much. It is possible the reason the CTA didn't alter your voice is that you naturally used the trained voice when you speak. It wasn't clear to me exactly what the benefit of CTA would be for me so I only went with the VFS. I knew I would still need the trained voice after surgery but now I wonder if I had CTA, would it have eliminated the need for a trained voice?

Recovery depends on the person. We have had people with great voices after 6-8 weeks and mine is just reaching the power level at 6 months but is still rough at times. There is no way to predict healing time and we have had a Yeson voice that took a long time to heal. I would suggest you look into a head set with an amplifier if you wish to continue with the lessons because you may discover recovery time is far longer than expected.

Feel free to ask me any questions you might have as I am here to assist others however I can.

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[jollyjoy]

My family told me to use a voice amplifier when I start photographing weddings in May if my voice is still not powerful enough at that time. My concern is that it will look geeky and weird as I've never seen or heard of a wedding photographer using a voice amplifier...so ideally I hope to not use one in May. But for yoga, I think a voice amplifier would totally work. 

[GeekGirl]

My family told me to use a voice amplifier when I start photographing weddings in May if my voice is still not powerful enough at that time. My concern is that it will look geeky and weird as I've never seen or heard of a wedding photographer using a voice amplifier...so ideally I hope to not use one in May. But for yoga, I think a voice amplifier would totally work.

Yes, I agree. In my yoga studio, we have teachers using headsets to project their voice. I've always prided myself in not having to use one. Guess it'll be for my own good now.

Anyways, I'll let you all know who I am now. Go to www.c l a r e d i n.com (take out the spaces)
That's me. Some of you probably knew me from years back under a different name. I used to host all kinds of LGBT parties in Philly. If you've ever seen any of my party videos, I used to speak so loudly I didn't need to use an amplified mic. Life's a lot more normal now that I've stayed away from the community. I guess you can say many of us outgrew it or just grew up.

[calicarly]

How about doing it at a time of year when most of your pupils are having a break or vacations? yoh will have to take a hit with some of them undoubtedly but reducing the effect is the best you can do. How about doing it before Christmas and over the Christmas period? Chances are most of them will feel like you weren't away that long ?

Another tactic that tends to work is getting your class/es involved say at the end of a class you discuss it with them for a couple of minutes and suggest it and get a general feel of their reaction maybe even ask when the majority would be OK with it, then when the time comes hey will feel like they made the decision with you, not just you single handedly. I'm sure these ideas have or would cross your mind but I do think they work.

[GeekGirl]

How about doing it at a time of year when most of your pupils are having a break or vacations? yoh will have to take a hit with some of them undoubtedly but reducing the effect is the best you can do. How about doing it before Christmas and over the Christmas period? Chances are most of them will feel like you weren't away that long ?

Another tactic that tends to work is getting your class/es involved say at the end of a class you discuss it with them for a couple of minutes and suggest it and get a general feel of their reaction maybe even ask when the majority would be OK with it, then when the time comes hey will feel like they made the decision with you, not just you single handedly. I'm sure these ideas have or would cross your mind but I do think they work.

I was thinking it would be good to do it over the holidays or even summer break. Unfortunately, even during those periods, this studio has a constant flow of students. Plus, my day job has to be taken into consideration, too. I'm an IT director for a university, so I meet lots of people every day, but they all know and understand my situation. The thing is there's never a right time for any surgery or extended leave of absence. The thing that makes this surgery very different is I won't be out; I'll just be mute for a while. When I was put on voice rest back in 2013, I didn't speak for a couple of weeks. Those were the hardest weeks of my life because I'm the type that loves interacting with people. I had a pen and notebook and wrote everything I wanted to say down. I don't think there were all these great type and speak phone apps they have now back then (at least I didn't think about using them 2.5 years ago).

I will tell you that one of the weirdest things about teaching yoga, especially Bikram Yoga, is we're all encouraged to develop our chest voices. Since I already had a chest voice to begin with, I didn't have to develop it. One day I lost a lot of power in my voice from teaching the night before. I was teaching in the larger studio room and really had to project my voice in there. I wore a headset the day after I lost my ability to project my voice and was basically just talking through the amplified headset in class and one of my students told me that that was one of the best yoga classes she every took, so that's encouraging to me.

[Dena]

I don't know much about Yoga but my understanding is it's about relaxation. If so, a soft, just loud enough voice would be less distracting than a sharp loud voice. The loud sharp voice would work better in an exercise class where you are attempting to motivate people to get out there an move.

We have a tenant who wears a hearing aid and seems to lack a volume control. When he is in our small office for a while, my nerves start to react from his loud voice. I always try to locate myself as far away from him as possible without looking antisocial to reduce the effect.

[Lara1969]

I rested my voice for two Werks. I think it was long enough. I am pretty happy with my healing progress. The thougher time are the four weeks after that period. You are able to speak a bit but you will loose your voice after some time and you are very hoarse.

I choosed Dec. 16th for my surgery to use the Christmas break for the voice rest. As managing director it is also hard/impossible to take more than two weeks off. But it worked. My employees and our customers know about the surgery.