Hello,

Wow, I haven't been in these forums for years!

I've been living as myself for a good amount of time now and I am so much happier with my life! Yay!

So what am I doing here?
My voice is mostly fine in terms of passing. I can't recall not being recognized as a female on phone or real life, which is great! However I still feel conscious of my lower vocal range and the minimal yet constant effort I need to make to avoid falling there. This caused me to consider a VF surgery.

So what do I hope to gain from a surgery?
I would like to have my voice more comfortable in that range (or slightly "better range"), removing that subconscious feeling I get inside... I am not sure if my words explain it properly, though I trust people here can understand what I mean otherwise.

I'd also love to gain higher notes so I am more comfortable to "play" with my voice and be more natural. While a singing would be amazing, I feel like the psychological impact of just being able to feel more free and natural with my voice and sounds I make would be amazing.

Are my expectations realistic?

Yeson or voicedoctor?
I've read some of the discussions here and it seems like yeson is the most mentioned place and seem to have quite good results[?]. I'm wondering if I've missed something. Anyone has any experience with Dr James Thomas (voicedoctor)? Anyone else I missed?

Recovery question
I am very stealth. How will people at the office or friends perceive this? Can it be shrugged off as speech pattern changes?

Random observation
Something I've noticed and was wondering if it's common.

I can't point to a specific point in time but I've noticed I can no longer access my lower voice without an effort, which may be more of a psychological effort than a physiological one, as if I've made a subconscious ban on my lower registers.

Is this something people can identify with? In a way, my current voice is my "normal" voice now, it is pretty comfortable and probably (almost?) takes no effort, though can probably still be improved... To be honest, I have stopped over analyzing my voice years ago so I can be happier and less conscious of this ->-bleeped-<-

I'd say my voice is probably not "perfect" and might be more "comfortably in lower female range". There has got to be a huge psychological component to how people use their voice and I am curious how other people feel about it and how it might affect surgery results. Will I it require training to use a lower voice or the voice will be too high? Is the muscle going to be used pretty much the same and so no change will be needed?


blablabla... Thanks! Hope to see some comments

Before I had voice surgery, I considered three doctor. Dr Thomas was the first that I found and the voice samples he had up didn't impress me. They sounded a bit machine like and I think it was due to the fact he was reconstruction the larynx. My information on him is two years old so he may have changed his procedure and results may be better now.

Yeson in Korea has pretty good results however I preferred not to travel out of the country and my starting voice was extremely low so I was unsure if I could get enough boost in range to push me into the feminine range.

I ended up with Dr Haben because he could combine CTA and VFS providing the maximum amount of pitch increase. I was lucky and VFS was suffice to give me a sweet spot of 220 Hz without adding CTA in. The problem with CTA is it would limit your singing voice and while I may never sing, I would prefer to leave my options open. If you are interested, my surgical thread is here.

Hi Dena,

Thanks for the info! Reading your thread. Wow, what a story! Haven't finished reading yet but seeing you say you got to the 220 Hz sweet spot, I hope you are very happy now

I don't think I'll need CTA, or at least hope not. As I said, I haven't analyzed my own voice in a while but I think I can quite easily get to average of 160 or 190 or 210 depending on how I feel... I should probably do a new analysis some time.

Your working about 30Hz above my pre surgical voice so I am pretty sure you can get by without CTA and that opens you up to any surgeon you desire. In my case, I had a 50% tie which is the maximum you can have without affecting voice quality. You should be able to get by with less however I don't know enough about that part of the surgery to say what you would need. In any case, feel free to ask me questions. I had a good deal of knowledge about voice before coming to the site and my reason for joining Susan's was for information on voice surgery. I spend between 3 and 4 months searching the web updating my knowledge and I am still looking for new information.

Hi Dena,

I sent you a PM!