Something people are overlooking is Dr Haben's instruction say first week no sound. Next week and a half light usage. Do not return to normal usage for 2 1/2 weeks. Just because you sound good after the first week isn't an indication your voice is ready. My voice is well over the initial healing period at 3 months but it still sounds bad so how the voice sounds isn't an indication that the voice is ready in the early stages.

I think I might make an appointment with an ENT to have my chords checked and make sure I have healed properly before resuming speaking. Does anybody know if I am able to go to just any ENT? Do I just go into my appointment asking to have pictures of my vocal folds taken?

Hi

I'm the very unlucky girl here. In case there is any doubt about my identity, Jollyjoy and Runaway, you may remember I was using a blue notepad while you were using your phones. I had a purple dress with black boots.

I don't really hang around on Susan, I post on ->-bleeped-<- where it's all very relaxed and cordial. I do not want to talk about my VFS here, as I feel extremely unhappy and do not want to break any forum rules.

Google my name and you will find me and what I have to say. Be extremely cautious with your voice.

Welcome to Susan's Place isleeplikecat. Feel free to post as much or as little as you want. There are several people who have had issues with voice surgery and have started threads or made post on existing threads. My voice is extremely slow to heal and at 3 months, it isn't ready yet. As long as you tell your story, your post will survive as not all surgeries turn out as expected. If there is anything I can help you with, let me know.

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isleeplikecat, I'm very sorry to hear that your stitches have come out. I wholeheartedly empathize with what you must be feeling right now, especially having met you in person and had the surgery on the same day. I hope everything will work out for you at the end. Thank you so much for giving me the warning on being careful with using the voice during recovery, I definitely plan on using the voice as minimally as possible in the coming weeks.

There have been issues with Korea as well so neither doctor has a spotless record. As for my case, in my pre surgical appointment I knew for me the healing rates Dr Haben was giving might not apply to me because both my SRS and nose job took a very long time for the swelling to go down. In one way that was a good thing because the voice was pretty well useless for the first 2 weeks enforcing the silence period for two weeks. After that it was so weak I spent several more weeks using it as little as possible. If i could have made my voice work without surgery, I would have never considered it but I walked around for 35 years as a female with a very low voice. I suspect I never passed once I opened my mouth. I encourage speech therapy when ever possible because surgery isn't without risk and speech therapy will make you better informed about the surgery when decision time comes.

I do belive in people being informed when they make a surgical decision and on this site some FFS surgeons are known to have limitations in their procedures. Susan's is a medical information site and only operates on the very small amount of money donated by the users of the site. Run the numbers and the site operates on less than $40,000 a year. I am unsure how many people use us as a resource when selecting a doctor because for every user of the site, there are about 6 guest on at the same time. users we have some idea about from their post but guest are totally unknown as to their wants and needs.

Our desire is to provide the best possible medical care for those who view the site. Some doctors are better at one type of surgery and others may do another surgery better. We provide information that will allow the site user to select the care that best meets their needs.

Hi Roni, I went to my GP and got a referral to a local ENT, so it's probably the same process where you are.

I'll be 5 weeks post-op by tomorrow, but due to me overusing my voice last week, I'm gonna give myself an additional week to recover.

I think as long as you listen to your body, you'll be ok. If you feel pain, definitely stop, or speak softer/lower. Don't put yourself in any situation where you have to speak loudly, like a crowded bar. That's exactly what I did, that I shouldn't have done!

Isleeplikecat, I'm so sorry this has happened to you, and I hope you manage to work something out, whether with Dr. Haben or someone else. If the sutures breaking were not due to something you did, I don't see why you should be expected to absorb so much of the cost.

FWIW when I mentioned Yeson to my gender therapist, she said some of her clients had gone to South Korea with unsatisfactory results, so neither option has a 100% success rate.

Nevertheless, I wish you all the best with SRS! That's something to look forward to for sure.

Isleeplikecat, we are all very, very grateful that you have posted here. I am now increasing my period of vocal rest, especially since I have also been coughing repeatedly since the surgery.

Like others have said, there are Yeson girls who have had unsatisfactory results and have had problems with their stitches. I think the seemingly more unsatisfactory results surrounding Haben's VFS is due to the fact that he is not very known yet, so girls who have had surgery with him recently have been more inclined to post about him. Any good or bad result from Haben has been magnified as a result. For instance, have you noticed the lack of Yeson posts on this forum?

I can't believe we are still expected to eat 80% of the surgery cost should healing not go as planned. I absolutely cannot afford to eat even half the cost.. more of a reason to increase my period of vocal rest.

Stay strong, girly, and I hope everything pans out well for you in the end. <3 Good luck with SRS!

Isleeplikecat, I know you have decided not to go into specifics about what happened, but may I just ask how long the pain in your throat lasted after your stitches broke? And is it a significantly painful feeling? I've been worried that maybe I've already broken my stitches or something but didn't feel it at all.. and maybe swallowed all the blood so didn't see any physical signs. Worst case scenario for me is not talking for a month only to find out my stitches have already broken anyway.

Quote from: runaway on October 19, 2015, 07:42:01 PM
I just had my second (and last) SRS consult, so now I just have to wait for my surgery date with Dr. Brassard!

I'm still in school, and I went full time right after returning from VFS, so thankfully I didn't have to deal with the additional drama that I imagine coming out at work would involve. Has it gone well for you?

Anyway it sounds like your arm is healing up fine! I started out on a 200cc Yamaha, and I now ride a Yamaha XV750, which is sort of similar to the Sportster. Do you intend to start riding again once you've healed up? I've crashed several times, but I haven't broken anything yet ***knockonwood***.

Regarding my voice, the comfortable pitch hasn't changed much (215-225hz), but I don't have to push it as low as I did before, to avoid agitating it. Stamina has improved, and breathiness has gone done, but it's definitely not 100% yet.

Gonna take it easy for the next week or four, but I'll post a recording again once I recover from last week's voice abuse.

Congratulations I am so excited for you!! How are you feeling?

Ohh school, gosh, I imagine it went real smooth! I actually haven't come out at work. Work and my parents--so I'm basically just part time. Though before VFS, I will definitely be making sure my office and parents know what I'm doing. As for the riding--no I'm pretty much done. I have no intention on getting back on the bike. I live in California and have to deal with massive traffic, so morning commutes are an exercise in Darwinism... unfortunately. I just don't think it's worth the risk anymore. But please, continue to ride safe!

A month of healing and not speaking sounds just about right to me. I wouldn't want to chance it, at all! Always better to err on the side of caution.

And Isleeplikecat, I am sorry to hear about your voice
My heart goes out to you, your experiences will definitely help others here. Best wishes, girl!

Audree

I spoke with Isleeplikecat privately. According to her she faced absolutely no problems with coughing, and had accidentally spoken only one word during recovery. The second week of recovery she still limited much of her speech. She took all her medications religiously and didn't exercise/strain herself, etc for weeks. It is interesting how her stitches still managed to rip despite all this, during a normal phone conversation no less.

I think some of it might go back to what you can't control. Talking in your sleep, snoring, spasms in the vocal cords and possibly healing differences where the cords don't fuse for some reason. There is also a possible of a flaw in the suture material that wasn't detected in manufacturing. There is a reason why they coined the term surgical risk and everybody faces it when they go under the knife. I am interested in learning more about these risk because sometimes things don't work out as expected.

Anyone knows around what time the vocal fold shortening becomes permanent? So that even if the stitches come out, it would not matter? I originally thought after the first week of recovery, there's no way you can 'undo' the surgery unless you abuse the voice by screaming, shouting or something.

The rule is 2 1/2 week for normal activity but the surgery is still healing at that point. I tried to get an answer our of Dr Haben on exactly that point and he said your voice will get very bad and then vey good. I wouldn't want to try something like that before the 3 month mark and maybe as long as 6 months. As for me, I am still using my trained voice and yelling won't work in it. I haven't yelled in many years and I don't see a need to.

Yes I am interested in knowing when the folds are conjoined permanently. Dena, are you suggesting that the problem with Isleeplikecat's VFS is that her folds might not have healed together properly? If I give myself a month's vocal rest, and then check up with an ENT to make certain my folds have "fused" together, are stitches coming off something I should not have to worry about at that point? I never asked Dr. Haben this.

Edit: You stated that the sutures become permanent around the 2.5 week mark but the surgical site is still healing at that point. What does that mean? That the conjoined folds could still come undone? I thought dissolved stitches = permanently joined folds?

You can return to "normal" usage at 2 1/2 weeks. Yelling, coughing and sneezing aren't normal. The voice is still healing at that point so "normal" use may slow the healing process according to Dr Haben. You receive Prilosec for 4 weeks and if you have acid reflux you would receive it for even longer to protected the sutures and prevent the acid from harming the surgical site. I think my sutures came out between week 5 and 6 which was the point were my body rejected the sutures taking my voice away again.

As for why the surgery fails, I don't have a clue at this point and would like to know more. Possible thoughts are the cords continued to move against each other preventing fusing. Something quirky in the body prevented them from fusing. Or the bigger one is the web didn't form correctly leaving a weak point that allowed the joined cords to separate. I would really like to understand these failures better so we could warn others about what to watch out for in recovery. You may not feel pain from the surgery (I still feel a little) but healing may take 3 months so be careful with your voice even if it sounds great and you feel no pain.

Bodies heal at different rates so Dr Haben was very reluctant to give me a hard number as to when the voice is fully recovered. As such at 3 months I now allow coughs (no coughing fits)  but yelling is still off the table. I am an engineer and as such I error on the conservative side whenever possible. While I enjoyed Dr Haben, I don't want to return for a repair job.


Isleeplikecat: As a moderator we live by the TOS and Susan gives us little direction beyond that. The opinions  posted are the views of the poster and while we do remove or edit post, we need to justify our actions with the TOS. I am interested in reading more of your posts to understand exactly what caused the failure because so little is known about the failures. Also your story will help balance out the good outcomes. Far to many people are ready for surgery before giving voice therapy a chance and your story might help them develop a more balanced view of the surgery.

As for your name, we should be able to fix that as long as the name isn't already used. When we do it, you will need to reverify your account. I will do it latter this afternoon when my instructor is back so I don't make a mistake.

Username change all completed be. Please be aware a password reset email will be sent in the near future. Hugs
Mariah

Quote from: isleeplikeacat on October 21, 2015, 01:22:15 PM
Oh and I was so tired yesterday I made small mistakes. First, I mistyped my username, it should be isleeplikeAcat. Dena, you're a mod, can it be fixed?

Hi, Cat. I'm so sorry that your surgery was not successful. I would be devastated too.  At this point, I hope that your folds heal up nicely and your voice returns to at least a good approximation of what it was before. Then you'll have a good starting point if you wish to try vfs again. I guess it goes to show that not any surgeon has a spotless track record. I'm disappointed that Dr. Haben won't cover more of his cost in your case. Though, I can understand the surgical center not discounting at all as I have not heard of any surgeon who offers free revisions without the cost of the OR and anesthesiologist coming out of pocket. I wonder what Yeson's policy is on revisions. If I recall, they own the center where the surgery itself takes place? Maybe I'm wrong on that?

isleeplikeacat, I'm sorry to hear you've been very depressed. I hope you can feel better soon. I feel very terrible that this happened to you. I've been thinking about your situation non-stop ever since you shared the news. I remember running into you three times at Rochester, twice at the office and once in the hospital. You were super friendly when I saw you, so I felt very connected to you. I was so excited to have met both you and Runaway, especially because I thought I wouldn't meet any transgirls there. I was shocked to hear your stitches came out. I really hope you can end up with the voice you had hoped for. You have my email, so you can always email me if you need anything.

Quote from: isleeplikeacat on October 20, 2015, 07:41:56 PM
And for whoever plans to go to Haben, think twice: make sure you have twice as much (-20% lol) in case the procedure goes wrong. I'm sure he's good, but that's taking a much larger financial risk than going to Korea, where the results are consistent.

While only one person has reported busting the suture with Dr Kim, I would hardly say the results are 100% consistent. I know and hear a number of women who were dissatisfied with their surgeries and a few who sounded androgynous rather than feminine. I had my VFS from Dr Kim but I think I got lucky in that I got a passable voice after 1 month. Some people don't after 4 months. Look at anjaq, she is struggling with all sorts of issues now... her voice passes but she has issues with it.

Again, I'll say - VFS is not magic. Anjaq or someone correctly called it voice supporting surgery. And unfortunately sometimes things go wrong, as with any surgery. Sometimes there is pre-existing "stuff" that can interfere. Plus our bodies are all different.

That said, I really hope you can recover and get another shot.