Voice Surgery - Anyone heard about it?

[marelivki]

Hey. Since I've begun my transition everyone has been telling me that testosterone changes vocal chords and everything around that area irreversible, so I trained my voice with deep stealth production Finding your female voice. But I've recently found interesting page, that seems to resolve our voice problems. Here is the site with result examples: http://www.voicedoctor.net/media/cases/pitch/index.html

The results mainly depend on structure of our vocal chords - the older you are, the worse result you get, because testosterone deepen and make our voices more masculine year by year by enlarging things in that area (dont know specific terms). Some relatively young patients like 23, or 30 sound really amazing. Has anybody heard about that doctor? Because it seems to be really unrealistic a bit, since everyone recommends training, instead of surgery, thought to be unsuccessful and dangerous method.

My other puzzlement is that if surgery performed by dr James Thomas is successful (like the results he presented on his site), why so many "top", famous male to female transsexuals don't do it and embarass themselves in everyone's eyes due to masculine voice? I don't want to insult anybody, but for me it would be tremendously awkward to be a public person, a woman, and use such a gross voice.

[Mindy]

I am looking at this Dr for surgery in Nov or Dec as voice lessons are not getting any better.  Jody who is the Dr's nurse is very nice she emailed me a packet within hours of talking to her also she is snail mailing a packet, The procedure is in the area of 9K but it will be so worth it.

[MarinaM]

Vocal chord surgery is risky and produces half baked results. You have to work at it regardless :/ Although it will raise your voice a full octave.

[marelivki]

Vocal chord surgery is risky and produces half baked results. You have to work at it regardless :/ Although it will raise your voice a full octave.

What do you mean by saying half baked? It's not risky, maybe generally voice surgeries are risky, but effects of this surgery is impressive, and the doctor doesn't claim that his surgery can be unsuccessful.

Where did you find the information that one needs to work at it regardless? I haven't seen that on his site.

[Janet_Girl]

Before I let anyone cut on my vocal cords, I would use everything else.  I had good results with Deep Stealth, but others have had good results with Kathe Perez

[MarinaM]

I have the "finding your female voice " thing as well. Their website tells you about it, and I believe they link you to a surgery website so that you can hear the change as well. It doesn't provide results that I haven't been able to emulate on my own. It will raise your voice, but you have to work at softening it yourself. Often softening is all you need, girls with "smokey" voices can be sexy.

[Mindy]

in my case i have to lecture in front of adults 8 hours a day 5days a week and my voice coach said i should consider this as the procedure has been improved greatly.

[marelivki]

I have the "finding your female voice " thing as well. Their website tells you about it, and I believe they link you to a surgery website so that you can hear the change as well. It doesn't provide results that I haven't been able to emulate on my own. It will raise your voice, but you have to work at softening it yourself. Often softening is all you need, girls with "smokey" voices can be sexy.

Whether I will have to work on softening or not depends on masculinization stage of my vocal chords. Examples posted on Dr James site proves that young patients can speak normal, not made-up, not trained, good sounding, feminine voice.

[MarinaM]

Oh, I see. Okay then.

I view it the opposite way. I believe that something that someone worked very hard to achieve is definitely not something that should be perceived as false. To each their own 

One reason why surgery is considered so risky is that if you happen to have some medical emergency where a tube has to be shoved down your throat later, there is a very real possibility that you will never be able to speak again. I would never, ever risk that if I can train and get similar results.

[marelivki]

"similard" word makes a tremendous difference... Do you realise that spectrum of emotions, feelings that you can express using your trained voice is really limited? I have listened to many voice examples of MtF transsexuals and it's always so monotone, even if there's some up or down in their voices it's very little because you have to control yourself all the time, and by the way, imagine situation that you for example would be on train, on long journey to somebody, suppose it would be 5 hours, do you think that after 5 hours after warming the voice up you will still be able to use your feminine voice? No way, the opportunities, the conditions of using this voice are really limited. If it's alright with you, then okay I hope you get the result you wish.

[MarinaM]

I just read another post of yours in another thread and I was not aware of your situation. On the net, we only know what people make available to us (concerning personal matters).

I hope the surgery works out for you as well

[Tamaki]

My voice coach works with people who are considering surgery with Dr. Thomas. What she tells me is that a lot of the women seeking surgery are unable to maintain their female voice throughout the day and with the surgery they can. The surgery is not a cure all and voice coaching should come first. I've also heard one example of his work that is not on his website and it sounded good but not perfect.

I've found that working with a voice coach have saved me so much time trying to practice the wrong thing or the wrong way. It's been very useful to have that feedback from another person about what I doing right or wrong.

I'm also finding that my range is getting squeezed smaller as I go up in range and I hoping that practice will allow me to expand this range a bit.

If you decide of get the surgery done please let us know how it goes.

[kelly_aus]

"similard" word makes a tremendous difference... Do you realise that spectrum of emotions, feelings that you can express using your trained voice is really limited? I have listened to many voice examples of MtF transsexuals and it's always so monotone, even if there's some up or down in their voices it's very little because you have to control yourself all the time, and by the way, imagine situation that you for example would be on train, on long journey to somebody, suppose it would be 5 hours, do you think that after 5 hours after warming the voice up you will still be able to use your feminine voice? No way, the opportunities, the conditions of using this voice are really limited. If it's alright with you, then okay I hope you get the result you wish.

I've done some vocal training in the past for other things, and have been putting those lessons to use in my journey to find my feminine voice.. From those lessons, I realised that I have 2 basic choices starting out.. Firstly, I can go for a much higher pitch than I have now and suffer a possible/likely lack of inflection. The second choice, and the one I've gone for, is to make small changes to my existing voice. A slight rise in pitch, speak more from the upper throat, rather then the chest and lower throat.. I'm always going to have a voice at the lower end of the female range.. So what? There are plenty of women out there who are much the same.. This, of course, ignores the fact that a feminine voice is as much, if not more, about how you say things, the words you use and the little physical expressions that go along with speaking.. Having in the past, been able to maintain a different voice, with a different accent, all day every day for extended periods of time, I feel confident that this method will be successful enough for me, particularly if I pay attention to how/what I'm saying.

And just remember, you could have surgery and end up with a well pitched voice, but without the correct vocal mannerisms, you won't sound entirely feminine..

[marelivki]

I can see You get a bit of paranoia... This whole thing "not entirely", "not perfect", "not totally" is in my humbe opinion really needless. Look, as far as none of us is intersexuall, we've all come through puberty, and we all have masculine voice, I think you should stop with this whole excellence thing, because even genetic girls aren't perfect, I've heard really great variety of female voices, some are intermediate, some are deep, there's often hoarseness in feminine voice, and I don't see a point of telling me that I won't be perfect either. I am not totally convinced of dr Thomas surgery, which is why I opened the topic, to exchange opinions with people here. I will think it over, but as I can see this surgery is really trustful. Anyway, you can still leave some thoughts I will be grateful for any.

[Mindy]

marelivki excellant response life is full of uncertainty and risks I believe in Dr Thomas and his work and there for I will be having surgery with him in the fall of this year. 

[marelivki]

Mindy, I am really looking forward to reading your report! Dont forget about our community I haven't found yet any report from visit at dr James' hospital, so I hope you can make one!