@Kiwi - Yeah, I'll definitely not stand for mis-gendering, although it's difficult since I won't be able talk. But even if have to type to them to correct themselves and have respect then that's what I'll do. Fortunately I don't have any dental work so I'm hoping there are no issues there.

@anjaq - Thanks! I've done a bunch of different recordings, but I like some of your suggestions with regard to the types of recordings. I'll have to do some more just to cover those different scenarios. I have a few different rainbow passage ones at different frequencies, some singing in different frequencies, but doing other types would be good to compare with. I'll be updating here as I recover with recordings and comparisons.

Sarah - what I just did - I just held a mic next to me on the phone with a friend. It was quite revealing as it sounds so different from my recordings made deliberatly for voice checking. That may be another reeeeaaly good way to compare actual day to day speaking voice pre and post.

Sooo feel you on the sickness anxiety! A week before a few of my roommates started getting colds and I was like STOP DON'T COME ANYWHERE NEAR ME! It was pretty funny to them, but to me I was like NO, SERIOUSLY!

You're going to do fine with the no talking thing. You'll be dying to hear your new voice, but overall the recovery period is so short that three weeks from now will feel like yesterday. The adventure to Seoul helps, too, I think!

Anyway best of luck to you and cannot wait to hear the before and afters starting to roll in!!

Quote from: Jennygirl on November 03, 2013, 06:56:58 PM
Sooo feel you on the sickness anxiety! A week before a few of my roommates started getting colds and I was like STOP DON'T COME ANYWHERE NEAR ME! It was pretty funny to them, but to me I was like NO, SERIOUSLY!

You're going to do fine with the no talking thing. You'll be dying to hear your new voice, but overall the recovery period is so short that three weeks from now will feel like yesterday. The adventure to Seoul helps, too, I think!

Anyway best of luck to you and cannot wait to hear the before and afters starting to roll in!!

Thanks Jenny! I can't wait either, it's crazy that it's so close now. Yeah, I think not talking will be easy, especially since I try to do it as little as possible these days anyways haha. But the not coughing or clearing the throat, I'm finding that to be pretty hard. It seems like it just builds up more and more as I suppress the urges. Drinking water helps a bit, but I didn't realize how often I subconsciously do it throughout the day. That'll be the true test of my patience and willpower! However, I hope you're right that being in Seoul will hopefully keep my mind busy enough to get through the first week without incident, then by that time I'll probably be so used to it that the next couple of weeks will be easier.

Quote from: anjaq on November 03, 2013, 06:30:47 PM
Sarah - what I just did - I just held a mic next to me on the phone with a friend. It was quite revealing as it sounds so different from my recordings made deliberatly for voice checking. That may be another reeeeaaly good way to compare actual day to day speaking voice pre and post.

That's a great idea. I'll try and remember to do that sometime this week!

Yes, I think not clearing the throat or coughing is the hardest. I had a throat infection (again) last month and could not speak for 2 days. I decided to improve healing by just following the advice here thinking that it cannot harm when it comes to healing the voice no matter if it is from surgery or infection. Not speaking was really not hard at all - well it was hard to communicate but not hard to stay away from speaking. But all the stuff that builds up in the throat when there is something going on there - in my case infection but I guess this also happens with healing after a surgery - that is vile. I managed to get it a bit controlled with water and just pressing and swallowing in a weird way, but i am not sure if that was better than just coughing a bit. I still could not avoid to occasionally clear the throat - so this is really a challenge... I hope you have figured it out Sarah, so you can do the same in Seoul then.
I am excited to hear how it went for you once its done and get a comparison of your recordings . I just keep getting warnings of people locally to not do this kind of thing - they are all so opposed to this even though few have actually met someone who had no success with it or even bad luck. It seems to be more of a meme...

Damnit, my worst fear has come true! Yesterday I started feeling scratchiness in my throat and last night I started getting a stuffy nose. Still sick this morning!! Seriously universe, I asked very politely to not throw any curve balls. I really hope it doesn't last long. I have just under a week to get better!

Oh no - that sounds not great. Do you have options to postpone? If I get this recently I found that Zinc+Vitamin C really do wonders. I had some similar "almost getting a cold" feelings a few times now and I fended them off with capsules of 200% daily requirement of Zinc and Vit C twice a day. Yes its overdose but in this case it worked as long as not taken long term. Normally this year I got colds every 4 weeks or so, so I am glad this works for now. Maybe try that and then hope for the best. Also I try to avoid touching anything public if possible - especially public restrooms or commuter trains.
Lots of health to you, Sarah!

Thanks anjaq, I'll try and load up on vitamins. I'm not going out in public until I leave for the airport on Saturday morning so I don't catch anything else! This is either going to be one of the short-term sicknesses or it's going to hit hard in a couple days, since right now it's not too bad. My throat only has a dull ache right now and the stuffiness is hopefully waning already. I hope it's gone by tomorrow though or I'll be stressing out!

So I decided to record a video as another comparison point for pre-op vs. post-op. I'm going to try and record videos throughout the recovery so I can see how the voice progresses week after week.

Sarah- Well on account of how great your voice sounds already (OMG) I think you are definitely going to sound incredible after your surgery with Yeson.

With your current regular feminine voice a little bit low in pitch, it still sounds undeniably feminine already due to having all the other aspects seemingly nailed!) and the vocal relief you get from the shorter vocal cords will be immediately noticeable and natural feeling. You will easily be able to access your feminine voice without fail. My pre-op voice was incredibly lower than yours and now to speak at a similar pitch as you in this video, I have to use the lowest range of my voice. You are gonna love it!

Sad to hear you've been feeling ill. I certainly hope, too, that it clears up. Maybe start taking a good expectorant now as a preventative so you can discourage it from getting caught in your lungs? (that would be the primary concern because you want to avoid cough). Yeson will give you loads and loads of expectorants and cough medications regardless when you get there.

My suggestion to stay or get healthy is eat a diet EXTREMELY low in sugar... as low as possible. Plenty of salads, foods rich in antioxidants (I think pomegranate is in season here in Cali now), and stay away from meat and dairy especially. Also echinacea goldenseal in dropper form (key: alcohol free!) I find to be extremely effective against upper respiratory stuff. I get it at whole foods. For the first couple of days you can take it 10X a day and then drop it down to the recommended dosage which is usually four dropperfulls in one day. I find that the pill form of it really doesn't seem to work the same. With the dropper, tip your head back and drop it right back on your throat. Gargle with it a little bit before swallowing and you can feel its effect from the warmth the echinacea produces. And another benefit of the alcohol free extract is that it tastes a lot better.

Be careful with the vitamins / multivitamins. They'll go straight through you unless you have the enzymes to absorb them properly, which is why it's best to get vitamins straight from proper vegetable nutrition.

If you say away from sugar, you'll knock it out super fast.

Sarah, my goodness your voice is very feminine. Yes, as Jenny says it is a tad low, but i know more than a few women with a similar voice.

Garlic is fantastic btw for colds. Finely chop and crush some cloves of garlic, then add to some warm/hot water. Let it sit for a few minutes and drink! Garlic is naturally antibacterial and anti-fungal, not sure if it's anti-viral but it's fantastic nonetheless. Hope you feel better soon! xx

Yes, I can't believe I forgot about garlic! +1 +1 +1

The finer you mince or crush it the better.. Allicin (the active component) is only released for digestion from traumatizing the clove's structure. Chopping it only two or three times, it will just go straight through you.

Great advice, both of you! I'll get some of that stuff and see how it works. I'm going to fight this cold with everything I can! Thankfully, I think it might be a short-term cold as my throat is already feeling a lot better and the stuffiness has subsided to make way for a runny nose instead, so hopefully it's already on it's way out.

Quote from: SarahR on November 05, 2013, 06:49:17 PM
Great advice, both of you! I'll get some of that stuff and see how it works. I'm going to fight this cold with everything I can! Thankfully, I think it might be a short-term cold as my throat is already feeling a lot better and the stuffiness has subsided to make way for a runny nose instead, so hopefully it's already on it's way out.

Good to hear it's a quick one

I wish I had that pre op voice - you already figured out how to get it all right, thats cool. I think you either did not manage to get to your "male" voice there or you started out rather high pitched with it. - I see I still have to learn a lot with my voice to get the other things right.

Well, I tried to get to my male voice, lol. If I tried to go any lower I would have definitely been forcing it beyond what would be natural, so maybe I just either have a naturally higher pitch or just speaking for so long in a higher pitch has permanently heightened it.

I had to try like 5 minutes to get down to where I was before to do a recording. It was reaaally odd for me to do this. And it hurt. But it definitely was closer to the "original voice" . So that is kind of proof that for some things voice training seems to work I think - I dont have to consciously think about doing my present voice and still t is way different from the original voice - but not different enough...  the higher pitched voice you do - I think it also has even less of the "bad resonance" - not that you have much of this anyways anymore. That voice there fits greatly to you. I bet you will get into that easily later on then and that would be great. I have to prepare myself for another example of this procedure that increases my desire to put my hoped on this rather than on voice training.

Quote from: anjaq on November 05, 2013, 08:08:10 PM
I had to try like 5 minutes to get down to where I was before to do a recording. It was reaaally odd for me to do this. And it hurt. But it definitely was closer to the "original voice" . So that is kind of proof that for some things voice training seems to work I think - I dont have to consciously think about doing my present voice and still t is way different from the original voice - but not different enough...  the higher pitched voice you do - I think it also has even less of the "bad resonance" - not that you have much of this anyways anymore. That voice there fits greatly to you. I bet you will get into that easily later on then and that would be great. I have to prepare myself for another example of this procedure that increases my desire to put my hoped on this rather than on voice training.

I definitely agree that voice training is still necessary even with VFS. I think VFS is good to get the voice to a point where you can focus most of the energy on practicing resonance, intonation, etc. instead of pitch, although I think even those are easier to get into once you don't have to focus on the pitch as much. And for some, voice training is enough for them to have a passable feminine voice that they can feel comfortable with. For me though I don't feel comfortable with it even if it does sound mostly feminine to others. There's also those times when I don't sound feminine like coughing, sneezing, yelling, crying, etc. that I don't feel I can change enough without surgery.

I do like how the higher-pitched voice sounds and if I end up somewhere near there (which I think I will, based on the results I've heard so far) then I'll be really happy. Even if I just go up by like 30-40Hz I think it'll put me in a range that I could feel comfortable with. I want to say that right now my average speaking voice is probably between 150-165Hz, and I don't try that hard to even get it there really, so if I go up by just 40Hz I'd still be just under 200Hz, which would be fantastic!

It sounds to me like you've pretty much already made up your mind about having this procedure Keep up those savings transfers and you'll be in South Korea in no time!

Also, I'm feeling a bit better today and I'm optimistic that my cold will be gone by this weekend. I've been taking Mucinex and vitamin C and not eating sugar like you all suggested. Although I couldn't bring myself to drink warm water with garlic in it, ewww! It's getting down to the wire now with only about 4 days until my pre-op consultation, which I'm assuming if I'm still sick by then they'll say I can't have the surgery. OMG, just saying that as a possibility is so depressing!

Quote from: SarahR on November 06, 2013, 10:38:36 AM
For me though I don't feel comfortable with it even if it does sound mostly feminine to others. There's also those times when I don't sound feminine like coughing, sneezing, yelling, crying, etc. that I don't feel I can change enough without surgery.

totally makes sense yes. People keep telling me that after a VFS you cannot yell anymore and some sounds will still sound as before as they are only about the resonance and not vocal cords, but I guess you all here will be able to tell the story which of that is true, false or somewhat right.

QuoteIt sounds to me like you've pretty much already made up your mind about having this procedure Keep up those savings transfers and you'll be in South Korea in no time!

Aw dont say that. You should not. I mean I totally crave for results like Jenny and really that thought of having an absolutely female voice without effort is one of my biggest wishes... But I also know that I should not go by specially made recordings on the internet but rather at some point have to meet people who actually did this and who are totally open about the downsides of it as well, so I can make a proper judgement. I possibly am going to stay in my job which includes teaching and this is a big fat warning on the general websites about VFS that it is not for teachers :\ . I guess I really have to wait for the results of therapy. Recently people have told me several times that my resonance is the problem and I noticed that if I make the effort to clean out the resonance, my F0 also goes up a bit, so maybe since I will have to change resonance in any case, the side effect would be pitch increase and then I dont need it.

I still wish you all the best and good healing. Hopefully having had a cold some days before is not an issue?

Anja- I agree with Sarah. I think you've mulled over Yeson more than all of us combined and you should just be honest with yourself about wanting to have it rather than keep talking yourself out of it

Maybe it's time to ditch the idea of having it in Germany (where it sounds like the results are unpredictable / sketchy) and go for the real thing. Voice therapy is always a great idea though and I'm not trying to say you should stop doing that.

You mentioned sounding the same as you do now. Well, it's true you will sound similar. But honestly, that's the best part- you're not going to sound like mickey mouse. You'll sound like a naturally higher version of yourself. All of my friends said that they loved my voice because it wasn't too jarring (believe it or not) and that they weren't thrown off by the way my voice sounded one bit... That it just sounded female and that was it.

My voice has gradually grown into feminity in front of others no doubt, but it's been a slow and natural feeling process to both me and them. One of the greatest things is that I still sound like myself.

Sorry about the first part of the message. I'm not trying to peer pressure you into it, ya just gotta understand from our perspective- it seems silly for you to keep talking yourself out of it. At this point you know as much as you will know about Yeson.. shy of actually having the surgery yourself or meeting someone in person that has been through it. Once again, sorry, I'm not trying to pressure you- just giving you an outside perspective!