3 months post-op Yeson

[Expressgirl]

So it has been three and a half months since I had my VFS surgery with Dr. Kim in S. Korea. I have been doing the exercises twice a day, I didn't say a single word for a full month and said as little as possible for the second month.

Overall, I must say I am really disappointed, the results are not good at all. My voice has started gaining strength over the past month and half and most of the hoarseness is gone, but I still sound completely male. I think my upper range has increased a little and my lower range has decreased a little, but I still must put in full effort for my "trained" voice to sound sort of female. Even using my trained voice I still get sirred sometimes on the phone. When I don't put any effort in and use my "chest" voice, it is still quite deep and undeniably male. I will post a clip of my voice next week (I have the week off work). I am so disheartened, because it was quite expensive to fly to Korea with my partner and and do the surgery with Dr. Kim and I was really hoping for better results. I did not expect results quite as good as Jenny, but I hoped for some noticeable improvement. If I had to do it over again I would not go through with the surgery.

I went to visit my parents last week for the first time since my surgery. They knew about my VFS but didn't say anything about my voice. When I finally asked them they were very hesitant to say anything but eventually they said they might notice a little difference. That really got me down. I have not given up hope and I will continue to do my vocal  exercises, but I don't think I will see considerable improvement from this point on.

[Aphaea]

A few questions from someone is who is currently a month and a few days post op.  Please don't take this as trying to place blame, but just trying to figure out your circumstances.

1)  How well voice trained were you prior to going to Korea?  One cannot expect this surgery to give an instant female voice.  I had no prior voice training going into this so my own voice definitely registers as male despite being higher pitch now. 

2)  Resonance training is key.  Myself and the two other girls with me all agreed the voice training exercises as presented at Yeson felt very rushed.  I had no clue how to do it two minutes after getting out of there let alone two months.  Have you tried a professional voice therapist?

3)  Dr. Kim mentioned to me that having a trachea shave could hurt the results of VFS.  Did you have that done prior to going or done with him?  He mentioned to me that if I elected to have it done there then it could take much longer to see results from the VFS.

4)  Have you tried measuring your voice pitch with Praat?  I was told that it would not rise until the 2nd month and the majority of it would be complete by the 3rd.  Measuring my voice with praat I have seen an increase in 35hz in the lowest pitch I can speak in (with a 135hz preop pitch).  I did not have a trachea shave done.

I very much so share the same concerns for myself, but realize that even still a surgery may not have guaranteed results.  I wish you the best.

[anjaq]

That really sounds disappointing. Did you analyze your voice in terms of pitch range, average pitch and such? Can you quanitfy your changes in terms of Hz. Maybe you can post a pre-op (unmodified "male/chest" voice, feminized voice) and post op (chest voice, feminized voice) recording, so we can analyze them and see if we can find some things.

What were your expectations exactly - how high pitched did you want to sound?

I think, Aphaea is right in that the surgery will not help with some other things that need to be trained by voice training - and I mean not only the ones that Dr Kim tells you to do. May I ask, if you did voice training before or how long you have been using your feminized voice before surgery?

I hope we can help you with that. don't feel so bad about it right now - I am sure there is something that can be done, still. Did Dr Kim do pr-op recordings? You can ask him to send them to you and then repeat them now and we can compare. If it did really not give much improvement in pitch, maybe it will pay off to contact Yesons again and ask them how to go about this, if there is improvement to be expected or what could have happened. Have you visited a local ENT or Phoniatrist to take a look at the surgery site, maybe take endoscopic videos or photos? It could help to see if the healing is good, if all the sutures are still intact.

Good luck.

[Jennygirl]

Sorry to hear you aren't pleased with your results Expressgirl

I would also be eager to know if you did any vocal training prior to surgery. I had done a 4 month crash course and was quite far along with training (or so I thought at the time)- I just had this stage fright kinda thing that kept me from using my trained voice.

If it helps to hear this at all, my voice has continued to improve since the early months and I think it's more a result of resonance becoming innate... Resonance is SO key in this. Also I dunno if you'd be into it, but if you can provide a voice sample maybe we could try to help you out?

[Expressgirl]

Sorry for my absence , I had to go for FFS revisions. But I will put it in quantifiable terms now. Prior to surgery my average natural voice was at 125 Hz and my trained voice was 156 Hz (very small range). Today I had my speech pathologist test me with her program and my natural voice now averages at 141 Hz but my trained voice averages at 199 Hz. That is an increase of 16 Hz in natural voice and 43 Hz increase in my trained/practiced voice. I am happy that I can reach that high and VFS surgery has increased my range, but I was hoping to get rid of more of the lower range. Dr. Kim was telling me in Korea that he hopes to bring my natural (no effort) voice to around 200 Hz, which is a 75 Hz increase as that is supposed to be the average of the surgery. So I feel I am justified in being disappointed, because I still have to put a lot of effort into getting into the female range (200Hz).

To answer your other questions, yes I have had voice training, I did the three month course with Kathe Perez, completed her MP3 program, watched countless YouTube tutorials and now I have started to see a new voice pathologist that is luckily covered by my insurance. I have been practicing my voice for 2 years. I know my resonance and inflection need work but when I am talking about improvements in my I am only talking about pitch. Also I used to sound like Ben Stein, very deep and mono-tone so I have made huge strides. I had my trachea shaved over a year ago and no revision was done to that or in that area now. I was not put under general anesthesia (only IV sedation) for my revision so a breathing tube was not even inserted into my throat.

I also recorded the rainbow passage twice, one in my natural voice where I speak with as little effort as possible and one in my trained voice that I use daily.

Trained: http://vocaroo.com/i/s0uWmNDPhCqj
Natural: http://vocaroo.com/i/s0Iljns1bFM1

[anjaq]

Hmm - I can understand why you are dissapointed, the lower version of it indeed sounds not that clearly female. I analyzed it in praat and it seems that it averages at 160-170 Hz with the lower monotonous passages more like 150-160 Hz. That is in the neutral range and an increase of only 25-35 Hz compared to the original pitch. How many moths is this now? I saw a chart in one of the other threads that showed that some people will get results only past the 6 months mark or even later.

That said - I think part of why the voice sounds less feminine than it could certainly seems to me to be resonance and prosody - it is rather monotonous. This sadly is also true for the 200 Hz recording, although pitch clearly pushes it into a female voice perception. You seem to have a bit of a hard time to learn those other techniques, but this is a bit in contrast to what was just said in https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,139439.1160.html where some people had the experience that they did actually not have to do some of the usual resonance change techniques like raising the larynx. But maybe they are actually still doing some unconscious resonance techniques.
In any case, a natural speaking voice of only 150 Hz after a VFS seems to be rather low to me as well. Is it at least easier to reach the higher pitches now? Have you had the sutures checked by an ENT and maybe sent the images they make with a endoscopic camera to Dr kim along with these recordings to find out if this is still ok, if something went wrong, if you just have to be patient and do your vocal exercises and wait for the pitch increase to come after some more months?

[Jennygirl]

I agree w/ Anja

Maybe you should try using bits of both voices and that would give you some pitch dynamics... I think that is the only thing lacking (that I can hear) in the recordings.

Expressiveness can make a voice sound more feminine, jumping from high to low register more often could possibly help with that. I guess you could call it inflection.

Anyway good luck and keep working at it. The trained recording sounds female to me and the natural one sounds kind of like a female voice trying to make a deep voice.