Hi,
First of all please be patient with my English, which is not my first language. Thanks..

Thanky, this will be valuabe information in repect to people who want to do glottoplasty outside of Asia - so this is in the US then? This may be great news for people having health insureance plans that enclose this procedure.

Cool. All the best then for that. Did he describe the procedure in more detail so we can compare it with Dr Kims and others'? I hope you will do extensive before and after recordings with relaxed/untrained and trained voices reading, speaking and such - if not, don't sweat it, but I think if you do and it comes out as good as Jennys pioneering visit to Dr Kim, your doctor may get more people flocking into his office soon

12 notes seems to be a lot though. That is more than an octave?? Be careful with that - you probably dont want to be too much of a squeaky girl ?
What range are we talking about Hertz-wise? Will he suture 1/3 of the length or more?

Greetings

This is an interesting combination of two techniques. He seems to do something like a CTA first (tightening of the vocal chords) and then uses a laser scarring method. I did not see that he uses a glottoplasty method anywhere. So I sure hope they will do something good and I hope you had the chance to hear some samples, as CTA is a method that is rather conventional. The danger is that it can create a voice that sounds a bit stressed. basically one of two muscles used in voice generation is effectively put in chains so the voice cannot reach the deeper end anymore and the voice moves into a higher range - into a falsetto essentially. I know several laser based methods working on the vocal folds - one is in preparation of a glottoplasty (suturing the vocal chords together) and the other is basically tightening the vocal chords or inactivating parts of them by creating scar tissue. However this bears a certain risk of a breathy or hoarse sounding voice in the end.

Please be careful and do not act in a rush! Your voice is valuable an it is not all pitch that counts and it is not only "always passing female" that counts alone  - you should also aim for a good and clear voice and I must say I am a bit worried if I read the techniques described in rather simple words here. It is no big art to raise pitch by an octave, but it is an art to do it in a way that makes the voice still sound natural and healthy afterwards, so please make sure that he can give you that as well.

I'm excited to hear how everything goes for you, it would be so great if there was a good VFS option in the states! I know that S. Korea is too far for some.

It is very interesting- it does seem like he is combining CTA with anterior web formation. I've never heard of that before. Do you have any examples or results from his patients before/after? And do you know what their success rate is?

Who knows, perhaps for some this combination procedure could yield even better results than Yeson's standalone anterior web formation. Going to be tuning into this thread for sure

Well, be sure to make recordings and post them , maybe you will be able to do what Jenny did for many others

But I really would like to know - does Dr Haben create an anterior web? Does he suture the vocal chords? I do not see that mentioned anywhere. He mentions LASER but that is about it. There are at least 3 applications for lasers in voice feminization and in the case of creating an anterior web (Wendler glottoplasty) it only is a minor part in it. My concern is a bit that this is not the case with Dr Haben. Does he describe what exactly he does with the laser anywhere?

Thats interesting indeed. So you have your own glottoplasty surgeon in the USA then. It would be interesting then how well he does in comparison to Dr Kim. The combination with a CTA is something I never heard. Maybe it is an interesting technique as both techniques used could be used in a light version, still giving a good pitch increase, or both could be used to their potential and give a very strong increase in pitch if that is desired. I am still very suspicious about CTA - I wonder why he does not just perform a glottoplasty alone. Did he explain that? I can imagine it is what I said - not using these method to their potential may give a better result in terms of naturalness?

Yeah - be sure to document everything well, you may be a bit like a pioneer when it comes to this surgeon in terms of presenting what he does to the forum - sounds interesting for sure. Maybe he will want to write a text about this, describing it in more detail. After all, there may be patients flocking to him just like to Dr Kim once you speak about this to the internet in a great voice

Congratulations then!
I hope all will be well and you can proudly present some post op recordings with time. Maybe you can also describe a bit better at some point what was done now - some girls here have even posted photos from their vocal chords post op once they had their examination with a camera. Those look really fascinating.

My best wishes.
Bye

Glad to hear everything went well Sorry I've been away for a bit!

Can't wait to hear your results!

Sounds about right to me. Takes the swelling time to go down. I had a hard time w/ that, too. At first I was only happy with my voice when speaking extremely softly (no upper range otherwise). The swelling adds mass to vocal cords which is basically the same thing that happens w/ laryngitis.

After Yeson, I basically had no volume until around 10-12 weeks and I was extremely careful about not trying to force anything (I was told this allows the swelling to dissipate faster).

And as with any other surgical recovery, swelling will vary day to day until finally settling down. This was very evident throughout that whole 12 week period as I would have good voice days and bad voice days. By 16 weeks though my voice was becoming much more dependable at louder volumes and continued to improve until 9 or 10 months.

Surgical laryngitis, sounds right on the money!

OMG! It sounds wonderful! O.O that's an immense difference!

Oh I have a slight idea went to yeson in July

Thanks just a little over 1 month post up going to record som stuff tomorrow

I can't hear much of a difference yet, but that might be because things are going slowly here :p

So I'll let you girls decide tomorrow

That really is a great result - for a no effort voice without resonance control it is perfect. So this was the com bined glottoplasty plus CTA method? Amazing. I so envy you already for having this as your natural voice now without worry about dropping anymore

I am happy for you - I dont even know if you need so uch of that trained voice anymore if it sounds that good already, but maybe it can do some more nice changes. I am sure you will be able to go up and down more once things are healed, although I heard that the CTA part of the surgery makes it a bit harder to use the pitch range one is used to. Also the CTA usually seems to rahter drop a bit in pitch post op, while the glottoplasty seems to do the opposite

Sounds like a fantastic result already!!!

Congratulations! Looks like we may have another voice surgeon contender in the US!

This is already better than most (if not all) of the examples I have heard from other US voice surgeons.

I will be very eager to hear how your voice continues to improve

It would be interesting to get a statement from Dr Haben about why he combines both methods and how much he appplies both - e.g. how much of the vocal chords he ties off. Maybe I will write him and mention that I want to post his reply here for the community.

Congrats on the surgery!

I tuned into this thread because nothing else has been discussed for a while other than Dr. Kim so very curious to hear your results..good luck and best wishes for a great recovery until you can start talking!!

Gigi