Oh - yes - I had a short surgery rather recently and I was not really up to much for some days after that - I was hoping it would be less drastic in Seoul since everyone up to now seems to have had a great time seeing stuff in Seoul. Well so at least your trip is rather short - just one week total.

it will end up being10 days, 9 nights in the hotel.  Having surgery on Monday shifted 2 recovery days before the surgery.  Apparently nothing happens on the weekend. 

all buttoned up and ready to fly home tomorrow!  The Botox shot was nothing to worry about, a small sting on each side of the larynx and out the door.  the voice program was very comprehensive with breathing lessons, neck muscle stretches, plus resonance control and range building vocal drills for after 2 months.  I left with all my medical records and videos from testing plus a pile of pills for after the Botox wears off.

jesse is awesome as is DR. Kim and the whole staff, everyone treated me with the greatest respect and concern.  I am so glad I made the trip, I cant wait to get to work on my new voice!

Did you get to hear your voice a bit at least?

not at all.  another few days until I can day a word or 2, but they said it would really be at least 2 months before it would start to change

Quote from: ReDucks on January 23, 2015, 04:54:59 AM
all buttoned up and ready to fly home tomorrow!  The Botox shot was nothing to worry about, a small sting on each side of the larynx and out the door.  the voice program was very comprehensive with breathing lessons, neck muscle stretches, plus resonance control and range building vocal drills for after 2 months.  I left with all my medical records and videos from testing plus a pile of pills for after the Botox wears off.

jesse is awesome as is DR. Kim and the whole staff, everyone treated me with the greatest respect and concern.  I am so glad I made the trip, I cant wait to get to work on my new voice!

Glad this all worked out great for you! It looks like they've improved the voice program since I went. It used to be just a sheet of paper and a five minute chat. Do you have a list of the exercises you're supposed to do?

Sounds great. Which muscle do they botox anyways? My voice therapist asked me this, she wants to know which muscles will be affected...

Be careful with the medication they give you for after the Botox - some people had pretty weird side effects up to getting pretty severly depressed, I heard. Check out what it is they give you and be prepared

Charlotte, it's up to 3 pages and 30 minutes practice / demonstration.  one part is abdominal breathing one part laryngeal and muscle massage and the 3rd part are the voice exercises, warm up, stretching/contracting, power and cool down.  these are the same basic exercises from their web page, lip trills, "m", and ng - ah.  http://www.yesonvc.net/disease/voiceMovie6.asp


Anjaq, clonazepam is the med.  has anyone actually reported problems or has it been more about quoting the possible side effects that are out there?  I haven't seen any 1st hand experiences, myself.

People in the Yeson Facebook group have reported mixed effects of the medication. Some were mild, like being tired or forgetting little things, others had severe effects like depression or foggyness in the brain, I think some even had suicidal thoughts - so this stuff has to be taken with great care and one has to seriously fade it out after taking it, the withdrawal seems to be really tough if it is stopped abruptly.

wow, I didn't even know there was a FB page.  I'll be careful if it comes to that.

Quote from: anjaq on January 23, 2015, 05:53:05 PM
People in the Yeson Facebook group have reported mixed effects of the medication. Some were mild, like being tired or forgetting little things, others had severe effects like depression or foggyness in the brain, I think some even had suicidal thoughts - so this stuff has to be taken with great care and one has to seriously fade it out after taking it, the withdrawal seems to be really tough if it is stopped abruptly.

Someone who was taking this for psych conditions (note: much higher dosage than what Yeson gives) blacked out in my car once while on this stuff... it was really awkward, and difficult getting them to wake. I'd be hesitant to take it at all - only if desperate, probably.

It seems to me like it might just be better to re-botox with a local voice doctor than take this stuff?

I will ask Dr Kim if there are alternatives - other medication in case this one has too severe side effects in me - or the option to get it botoxed again if that is needed - I know two adresses who have experience in doing that on the voice (treatment of vocal spasms) - if I get the names of the muscles and the dosages needed. Not that I am too keen on having another 3 months restricted voice, but if it benefits the overall result...

Back home, still on Seoul time.  Travel was totally a breeze, flew through customs and haven't had any major slips using my voice though the dog got me to squeak when he greeted me at the car outside the airport!  Today is the last day of the 7-days of meds I got from Yeson, meaning tomorrow I can say a word or two.  I'm kind of looking forward to hearing my voice.  From what I heard with the dog, it's higher and kind of weak sounding, but I'm sure it will get stronger with use and more time healing.

I've been doing the massage and stretching daily, it helps a lot to get the tension out of my neck and shoulders, not sure how it will help healing or my voice, but I'm drinkin' the kool-aide

regarding the drugs they give, I'm only going to say we are all different so YMMV with regard to side effects.  I am not prone to depression or anything so I will probably just take them and if they are not good for me, I'll stop.

All I know about the Botox was that the needle was tiny and Dr. Kim shot me on both front corners of the larynx, he did it without looking down my throat and it only took a few seconds to do both shots.  I honestly can't feel anything different about my neck from before the shot. 

Oh - only 7 days rest period and you can already try your voice? Thats fast. Most others had 14 days until saying a word or two and then another 2 weeks until saying a few sentences, right?

my instructions say 7 days 1-2 words a day max, Dr. Kim said 'emergency only', then 3 weeks later I can start short conversations.  At 2 months I start the exercises and speech pathologist (if I can find one) to work on resonance training and such, since my old methods of feminizing my voice won't work anymore (or will sound weird - J-Mi mentioned that too in her latest video).  At 3-4 months the Botox wears off and I start the pills which last for another 4 months.  After that I guess it will depend on how the tremor is going.

According to Dr. Kim, I will start out with a very similar sounding voice, then at some point between 2 and 6 months it will start to rise to my final pitch.  J-Mi with her extensive vocal training was pretty fast at achieving that pitch, but due to my age and long habit of habituating my pitch, he expects it will take me longer to get my voice under control.

edit: I didn't quite get it clear in my head if the Botox added another 7 days to the schedule of first talking, or not.  I'm checking on that.

Quote from: ReDucks on January 26, 2015, 04:36:32 PM
my old methods of feminizing my voice won't work anymore

Really - oh .... - Why did I actually work on improving that now again for the past half year? I was hoping to get a bit of an advantage out of this after VFS and not start out at zero again with a weird voice. Why would changing resonance not work any more after VFS?

Quote from: anjaq on January 27, 2015, 11:59:13 AM
Really - oh sh... - Why did I actually work on improfing that now again for the past half year? I was hoping to get a bit of an advantage out of this after VFS and not start out at zero again with a weird voice. Why would changing resonance not work any more after VFS?

J-Mi kind of showed it in her last video, using her old method of feminization pushed her voice too high and thin, making it sound unnatural. 

For me, I have habituated a combination of constricting my larynx up under my chin and opening my vocal folds a bit to take the resonant qualities down a few notches and as a result, my chords don't even close for half their length unless I 'belt it out'.  This serves to get the echo out of my voice in the bathroom and raise my voice from chest to throat, but requires 7x more air to talk than I should need. 

Now that my chords are shortened, I need to learn to speak with my full voice again, and use the exercises to learn to move the resonance from my throat to my head.  The 'm' exercise is supposed to help do that, but I am also trying to get speech therapist to help me further.  I wish J-Mi was still around to help explain, she knows more about this than I do, given her line of work.

By the way, you probably did your changes correctly, so your pitch control may very well work, my method of leaving the chords open was not the right way to do it.  Since I have a tremor, it may have helped control that too, but I am not sure how I came up with it, it isn't exactly something you can even tell that you're doing without a scope.

Quote from: anjaq on January 27, 2015, 11:59:13 AM
Really - oh sh... - Why did I actually work on improfing that now again for the past half year?

Probably because you've been the skeptical angel/devil-on-the-shoulder for so many of us throughout most of that time

Ps. I'm still getting Yeson but I'm going in May most likely. Still very much fixated on vocal matters throughout daily life. The real reason? Because it's impossible to not want a better voice when it's available.

Quote from: Rachelicious on January 27, 2015, 01:24:39 PM
The real reason? Because it's impossible to not want a better voice when it's available.

Hehe indeed - if it is available - not wanting it is kind of really hard.

Quote from: ReDucks on January 27, 2015, 12:08:14 PM
For me, I have habituated a combination of constricting my larynx up under my chin and opening my vocal folds a bit to take the resonant qualities down a few notches and as a result, my chords don't even close for half their length unless I 'belt it out'.  This serves to get the echo out of my voice in the bathroom and raise my voice from chest to throat, but requires 7x more air to talk than I should need. 

Ah ok - well that sounds not the best method. I used something similar where I used only half of my vocal chords and it was causing issues - it was why I researched voice again initially

I have gotten out of that habit with voice therapy and apparently have managed to use a good and female sounding resonance without changing pitch. So I was kind of hoping that this is going to be useful later. It is a relaxed way to use a female resonance but not pushing or squeezing it to get there.

So maybe because the voice therapist I am with was more wathcing out for my voice health than any pitch increases, it will be ok. I remember Amy had the experience that it was very similar afterwards, but a lot easier to get the right resonance - and that the transition to the head voice was better and several other really neat things.

It is going to be exciting in - well about 3 months I guess...