Hi everyone,
I'm having Glottoplasty done by Dr. Haben next month. I'm not planning on getting the CTA or the tracheal shave. What should I know before I have my voice reconfoobled?
The more you know about your current voice and what your voice will become, the better. I knew exactly what I had going in and when the Dr Haben told me what he could and couldn't do, I was able to make a decision on the spot because we pretty much agreed on everything. I knew post surgical I would continue using my trained voice but the surgery would make my trained voice sound feminine. I had been through therapy years ago so I wasn't worried about the therapy side of things but if you haven't done anything with your voice, expect speech therapy after your voice has recovered. If you have questions about any of this, ask. I am more than willing to help you make the most of this so you get exactly what you want. if you have an hour or two, you can read about my visit in great detail.
By the way, keep your questions on this thread where I will find them. If you start another thread, I might miss it.
https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,192393.0.html
I have had about a year of voice training. I have to admit that I didn't do the homework as much as I should have, but I think it gave me a pretty good idea of what my voice is like. I think they told me that my average when I first went in was between 135hz and 140hz. After about a year of practice, I could do functional phrases with good quality at an average between 208hz and 225hz, and that was with intonation (no chanting). My speaking voice after about a year of voice training was only an average of 160hz, but that wasn't with me trying to use a trained voice. That was just the residual effects of working with voice trainers and practicing at home some of the time.
When my new set of teachers in my last semester tried to get me to practice at 195hz, I was regularly accidentally ending up at around 208hz. I was actually more comfortable there than at 195hz. I had some recordings that were as high as an average of 230hz with good quality, although I couldn't maintain that for long periods of time.
One other thing we noticed about my voice was that when they tried to get me to go lower in pitch than 135hz, I couldn't go much lower. It's like I have an ingrained habit of speaking near the lowest part of my range. My mom and sister both speak pretty low too, so I think that might be a habit we all share, or maybe a physical quality to our voices.
Congrats on deciding to have a glottoplasty. The only thing I will share is that you should treat the recovery timeline as a rough estimate and not something that is set in stone. Most, if not all, of Dr. Haben's patients recover eventually but some, like me, were unable to use their voice well past the 3 month mark (and I am quite sure I won't be able to have normal volume until 6 months or more). Of course, there are many patients who recover in a matter of weeks. Just to be on the safe side, I would plan to take as much time off from work/other engagements as possible and mentally be prepared for being unable to converse for 4-6 months in case you are a slow healer or there are any complications. Best of luck and keep us posted!
Your pre surgical voice is where my post surgical voice end up. Oh well. The surgery will give you between 60 and 80 Hz typical gain but I suspect you might get 70 at least if there are no other complications. In my case, there was one of two different length vocal cords but I still had a good boost. That would put you at about 205 on the low end which is in the lower feminine range. My surgery had me at 205 as well with a trained voice but my voice has been creeping up a bit. If you haven't seen it before, this table (http://www.nyspeechandvoicelab.net/transgender/voice-feminization/) will help you get a good feeling for the numbers. I am also assuming you have seen Dr Haben's web page as it contains a good deal of information and now has my voice as well. I am the 64 years old one.
You may still need a little therapy after the surgery to find the voice you wan to use but if your current voice is working, you should have most of the speech patterns down. In addition, one of the problems I had was getting my voice out of the trained mode so Dr Haben could see just how low my voice was. Make sure you get the sample right and if he is talking a small amount of pitch change, re run the test and or question the reason. Dr Haben is very good about explaining things so ask.
I've read through a lot of experiences on the forums here, and I'm being clear with everyone in my life that this could easily be a six month recovery process. I've shared with coworkers that I will need to be able to do my job without talking at all for at least two months, and maybe even six months. I'm a programmer, and I already do about 2/3rds of my job via IM, so they're all okay with that. I think they're all just really really excited about maybe not having to reconcile my voice with my pronouns anymore. They've really been trying, but a lot of them work in other offices and my voice is all they have to go on. It's hard for them to gender me correctly when they don't see all of the stuff I'm doing as part of my transition.
I've basically been giving people the worst case scenario right from the start so that they're not expecting me to sound great two months out. Some of them are scared for me. I'm scared for myself too, but I've decided that this is what I need to do. My voice has become a big enough problem for me now that this risk is about the same level of risk as not changing my voice in a more permanent way.
Assuming you did your "homework" on the practical things I would say 2 main things:
Expectations: Glottoplasty is NOT a miracle cure. It will not give you a hollywood star petite feminine voice but it will help you, assist you in having a female voice. That may be a lower than average pitched female voice with some timbre to it that is not extremely feminine. Be sure to have the right expectations, I saw so many now who have been disappointed by surgery because they hoped for a feminine voice and all they got was a female voice that still required some effort or training to sound properly female and clean.
Recovery: Even if they say you are allowed to speak after 2 weeks or 4 weeks or allowed to sing and shout after 8 weeks, the recovery of voice surgery takes a very long time, especially the part about the brain adapting to the new voice, but also the healing itself. Its only a 4mm suture, but it takes weeks for the healing to happen and months for the voice to be really good again. Be prepared that everything regarding voice will be not without issues for several months - if it all goes faster, you are lucky, but do not expect to work in a call center after 4 weeks again or something like that.
Something good to know is that it is possible you will sound hoarse for the first six months for even longer. For some people, the hoarseness goes away pretty fast in 3 months, but for me, I'm at almost 5 months post-op and still dealing with the hoarseness/breathiness issue. Dr. Haben told me to not worry about this as the hoarseness will resolve on it's own and it could take 6-12 months for some people. So just know that if your voice sounds less than perfect at 6 months post-op, you still have time to heal.