Well, I still hope someone who is going to be at Yeson soon will ask that - specifically the part about why not do the exercises before the surgery, so one can practice them. I think it makes sense to do that, but of course it would somewhat pack more stuff to do on that first of the two days there. But it totally makes sense and I think someone actually going there should ask about this. Also the other questions are something one should ask before the surgery. Dr Kim takes a lot of time answering all sorts of questions - I think I was in there with him for an hour, with him explaining the procedure and me asking some detailled questions about it - so its not like there is not the time, its just that at that time, most are not aware of post op issues to ask about. Later on, one is confined to short email conversations that are always a bit more cryptic.
I think the three questions here can be answered thoough as follows:
breathing exercises: do them in the first 8 weeks and later use that sort of breathing for the voice exercises. Its just abdominal breathing - same thing singers or public speakers do.
massages: do them when you feel pain or strain. Basically its "on demand" to relax the muscles there
the tricky part is "adapt to your new vocal folds or your new voice". I think no one really knows how it works. Not even Dr Kim or any other surgeon for that matter. patients have all experienced that there is clearly something different about how to use the voice post op to make it work properly, but its not something one can pinpoint. I could say that using a female resonance as is shown in other exercise programs helps, but then its a different way of doing female resonance than in those programs - but it is a bit like that. Basically we have to rely on feedback for that - speak or do the voice exercises and esperiment, try what works better or not so good - what to do to sound less croaky, less breathy, etc - and then keep doing that unless it strains the voice, then throw it out again. Its a learning process like learning a musical instrument. In theory you just speak ina relaxed feminine way - but how to do that needs to be learned by doing and trying to do. I think the exercises help, they put you in the right direction, the botox and clonazepam supposedly take away power from muscles that distort the voice, so those should make the learning easier - healing adds to it, so that the voice clearly will sound a lot better after 4,6,9,12 months than at 2 months...
I know that I can shout and I can speak very loudly now - but I am not sure how I do it differently, but I definitely do. One part is that I definitely need to (sometimes consciously) use a higher pitch than my brain would try to do - especially when speaking loudly and definitely when I want to shout - my pitch has to go way up when shouting, otherwise, I am not really audible - one has to find the right "spots" at which the voice works well... I think this takes time and one has to get a feel for ones own voice, experiment, listen and care for the voice.
Its really hard rehabilitation, I think - harder than many may think, who believe you just go there and follow some instructions and you get a perfectly female voice...
