VFS: When did you start sounding normal after?

[4yyyy]

I'm 1 month post op from Yeson. I've began saying my very first words.

My voice sounds very raspy and it takes so much effort to speak. I don't sound like a male, but I don't think I sound female yet either.

When do I start sounding normal instead of this androgynous raspy mess?

How much pitch increase did you get after first being able to speak?

[Dena]

The simple answer is when the voice is ready, it's ready. The longer answer is I have heard good sounding voices as soon as it was permitted to speak, at 6 weeks and far longer. My surgery was with Dr Haben and I know I had a good deal of swelling. Around 6-7 months my voice started sounding good and would last more than a few words. It's taken over a year for it to become strong and reliable however I find I need to remain properly hydrated or it can get a bit raspy at times.

I really couldn't measure pitch well at first because of the state of my voice at first and the pitch improved over time. I needed a 50% tie and that has produced a 80-90hz improvement in my voice. If you have a lessor tie, the improvement will be less. Hitting the 220hz pitch is more important that the total pitch gain.

Don't forget that if you haven't had it, therapy and learning your new voice after surgery is important for the best possible outcome.

[Colleen_definitely]

Dena,

I presume you did voice training prior to surgery but did you find what you had done to be helpful afterward?  I imagine the techniques would still apply but with the prospect of potentially having this down the road I want to avoid picking up any more bad habits than I already have.

[Inarasarah]

You are about 2 weeks ahead of me on recovery from Yeson,  I definitely notice swelling still in my troat.  Fortunately, I have not had any coughing fits, other than the one time I tried to drink too much at one time.  Smaller sips, smaller sips

Anyway, I have tried so say hello, and I am also hearing a raspiness in the sound.  I agree with Dena that the swelling and healing needs to occur so that your voice can flow freely.  I am impatient as anyone to talk, but I am persevering through this.

-Sarah

[Dena]

Dena,

I presume you did voice training prior to surgery but did you find what you had done to be helpful afterward?  I imagine the techniques would still apply but with the prospect of potentially having this down the road I want to avoid picking up any more bad habits than I already have.

Remember that I had voice therapy around 1979 and it's still very useful because of the person I received therapy from. He was the person that people in Hollywood sent actors to if they developed voice problems. He pioneered treating voice issues with therapy avoiding the need for hit and miss surgery. Because there was a fair amount of extra time in the sessions, I not only learned about the transgender voice but about voice therapy in general.

I have helped a few people develop their voice though they were naturals and didn't require much help and I offer feed back on the site as I can hear the little detail in a voice that most people would miss.

I still need to use the head voice that I was taught and with modern software I can analyze my voice and others then apply what I know. I recommend some speech therapy before surgery because it's possible you might not need surgery to produce a passable voice. It should only take you a few appointment to get the basics down and then you will get a better idea about what surgery will do for you. What you learn isn't going to be wasted if you have a good therapist but will become the start of your new voice.

[sophie1904]

I'm currently exploring voice therapy and agree that going down that route before surgery is probably the right thing.

I had no idea surgery could be as effective as the yeson videos suggest - is that actually a realistic outcome from your experiences?

Also, are they only based in Korea? (I'm fine with travelling but being based in Europe, somewhere closer would be nice)?

Finally, do people have an approximate cost for this kind of treatment (PM me if you don't want it to be public), my voice is probably my single biggest worry of the whole process so it's really reassuring to know that there are good options!

[Dena]

There is an element of risk with voice surgery. It's possible for it to fail with little or no gain and we have one case of over healing resulting in problems. Most people get noticeable improvement but the upper limit is around 80HZ improvement over your base voice. In my case, that was over my trained voice as my trained voice was only 130-140 Hz. I still need to use the trained voice but it sounds far better than before.

Yeson only has one location but Dr Haben is in New York and preforms a similar surgery. There is at least one in Europe who I don't recall the name that has pretty good results as well.

Consider voice surgery carefully because the need for surgery should outweigh the possibly of failure. My voice was unpassible without surgery so the risk was worth it to me. If your voice is passable, you should be willing to risk losing what you already have.

[sophie1904]

Thanks - that's really helpful.

My base voice is around 160Hz so it's not a million miles away at all but it's still the area I'm most concerned about.

[Dena]

If that's your chest voice (normal male speaking voice), it should feminize nicely with just therapy. A couple of hours could have you speaking in the feminine range and then all it would take is practice to make it yours.

[Colleen_definitely]

Remember that I had voice therapy around 1979 and it's still very useful because of the person I received therapy from. He was the person that people in Hollywood sent actors to if they developed voice problems. He pioneered treating voice issues with therapy avoiding the need for hit and miss surgery. Because there was a fair amount of extra time in the sessions, I not only learned about the transgender voice but about voice therapy in general.

I have helped a few people develop their voice though they were naturals and didn't require much help and I offer feed back on the site as I can hear the little detail in a voice that most people would miss.

I still need to use the head voice that I was taught and with modern software I can analyze my voice and others then apply what I know. I recommend some speech therapy before surgery because it's possible you might not need surgery to produce a passable voice. It should only take you a few appointment to get the basics down and then you will get a better idea about what surgery will do for you. What you learn isn't going to be wasted if you have a good therapist but will become the start of your new voice.

Thank you.  I'm hopeful for a natural approach as I've never been a candidate for James Earl Jones impersonation, and I've always talked in my throat versus chest.  Head voice just sort of feels weird, but I'm merely exploring on my own at this point and likely doing it wrong.  Anything to reduce the number of times a doctor has to monkey about in my innards sound pretty good to me.

I just need to get over my habit of trying to do everything myself.

[anjaq]

It takes 6-8 weeks for the voice to sound fit for daily use. But then a couple of months more to loose the hoarseness - the voice exercises of Yeson help, starting at week 8

Voice surgery is not magic - the results of Yeson on Youtube are often great, but one has to admit that they are not randomly selected. So please if you consider the surgery, do not overstretch the expectations - it probably will not be as great as Jennys voice (who did the surgery at a 50% reduction of the vocal chords, giving her more increase plus she did a lot of training) and it will not be done with doing the surgery but require some additional effort of learning the voice. One patient was severely disgruntled because she imagined to just go there and get a voice like Jenny without any more efforts and it did not happen...

Regarding other options than Yeson - here in the forum there are at least 2 more options disussed - Remarcle in Europe and Haben in USA. They do things a bit differently but results seem to be quite good as well, mostly.

Speech training makes some sense - its a mixed bag doing a lot of it pre OP as half of it can be applied, the other half has to be unlearned again. So if one plans on doing the surgery anyways, I think it actually makes sense to first go for the surgery and then do the voice training with the new improved voice that makes it a lot easier. If one can imagine to avoid surgery, it makes sense to first try training as in many cases it can give acceptabel results as well, in some cases even good results.

[Inarasarah]

Thanks Anjaq,  I agree with everything you have said.  Being at week 4 I can say that I definitely feel the weakness in my throat.  I cannot wait to start trying to talk next week.  I am also expecting A LOT of work to get the results I want.  There is no free lunch, if you want it, you gotta work for it

-S