MtF Voice Feminization in Brazil, CE, Fortaleza - 2 month post-op

After each week my voice improves more. I forgot to tell you one detail before: The speech therapist has a laser which he places at your throat and it does lymph drainage, speeding up your recovery. I researched online and each dosage of it is equivalent to hundreds of lymph drainage done by hand massage. Lymph issues usually happen after surgeries, making the are more swollen.

Still healing voice, today: https://yukoo.art/audio/mtf_voice/20220129_post_op.mp3

From now on I will show voice samples only after each month and only if the voice improved substantially, until 4 or 6 months after the surgery. At that time the vocal chord healing and also training will be complete.

---------- 2022/01/23 ---------- Hello. As promised I will now be reporting how my voice feminization surgery was and the post-op, currently it has passed almost 2 months since. There is no category for that at realself, so I used the one many before me with that subject also used. During a MtF transition it is common for this surgery to be done together with the usual plastic surgery. It was an easier surgery so I did not recorded much, just an image, 3 audios and some information. What I still remember is the following: The hospital was the same as the one for my rhinoplasty which I also showed here at realself: Hospital Oto, so, I will not repeat myself much. The customer service from it was horrible as expected, sometimes they called me "he" and "him" and I am almost sure I heard after the post-op a nurse saying "a she-male". One of them said I looked like "Kurama" from an old anime, a man which looked like a woman... I could sue them for that. I complained to the doctor, which is somewhat famous here, and he in turn complained to the manager of the hospital; at least they will think twice before giving such a bad customer service again to a transgender person. They said they will "train their staff better", but if what they said is really true, honestly they should had done that way earlier. Just before the surgery I by accident washed my hair, and I had a hard time drying it before the surgery; and even so I felt a lot of cold at the surgery table. The anesthetist was one of the only in 3 surgeries I did in 3 months which got my blood vessels right at the first try without having to subject me to additional pain. Good. It was the only surgery where I felt dizziness before my mind went out of order though, a bit uncomfortable but taking that fact out it was the same as all the other surgeries regarding that. One of the surgeon teammates was laughing too much tough, it was irritating. After the surgery I could not talk and anyway I should not. It was not as bad as I expected neither too easy. It was harder to swallow and breathe, and it hurt a bit at the throat. Sometimes I almost got choked swallowing the mucus from an irritated throat. The medications were as usual for a surgery: things for your throat to not get too swollen, for pain, for infection, for mild fever... Like the rhinoplasty I decided to not eat anything solid for a few days, starting with liquids and then going to cold soups, then hot soups then normal food. The funny thing is I was right doing that even though the medic said I could "eat normally after the surgery" and could "talk in around 2 weeks". Other fact is: After 2 weeks the surgeon said I would actually need to wait 3 to 6 months... that was the real recovery time. I wish he had been open with me about that at the first consultation. The surgeon did not talked much by chat, replying most of my questions if I had understood something right with a thumbs up... he became much more talkative just before the surgery and after. He could improve regarding that, but I know he is a busier man than others as he is also one of the managers of the plastic surgery clinic ( Otosplasticlinic). I liked how he did not cared about being paid before the surgery, he was not concerned with money. Perhaps being somewhat famous have that effect, and I am surprised he was one of the few medics with some fame to actually treat you well. There is one details though: Like the surgeon who did my nose, he had not a receptionist only for him, she was for the entire clinic; so I could talk with him directly always. He also accepted online exams and criticism normally, unlike the doctor I said at one of my reviews. He charged the hospital apartment visit while the doctor which did my nose did not, but the overall value was low as the surgery was simpler. I tried very hard to stay silent for 1 week, but by the end of the week 1 I was almost going crazy from not being able to quickly convey what I wanted, so I talked around 10 words saturday and 25 the next day. The quantity of words you can speak increases slowly with time, and at least at the first weeks you will always lose your voice after the limit was trespassed and your throat will get more irritated. You will be very, very hoarse and low too. What helped a lot too was a drink I learned from my nutritionist: water, ginger powder, what is called in Brazil "propolis" extract and lemon. As far as I know: Ginger and lemon helps in weakening bacteria and propolis is anti-inflammatory. The funny thing is which that drink was for digestive problems. How did I communicated back then? I wrote in my smartphone what I wanted and showed to someone. It was much slower than talking though. After week 1 I made again an effort to remain silent and for most of the week 2 I did, but near the end of week 2 I started talking again. It was easier to talk too. I then scheduled visits to the speech therapist and he passed me increasingly harder exercises to recover my voice. To my surprise they do work, but as I am currently very busy, instead of doing them 3 times a day the set I am struggling to do 2 times a day. Your voice improves a lot and then after some time the voice becomes worse again, the exercises speed up the recovery but do not replace the fact you will still need months recovering. The speech therapist explained in detail how each exercise moves the vocal chords and how that movement helps its recovery. Currently I still get tired of talking a lot and the voice has flaws sometimes, but the voice not longer is gone after that limit, it just becomes worse. I can speak louder. He ran a check though and my voice left the male range of frequency and is currently at 250hz normally and 350hz when I push it a bit to be more feminine. The surgeon did not lied to me, he said the surgery would solve just half of the problem, which I would still need to train my voice and manipulate it a bit while I live; it would just become a lot easier. It did become much less tiresome to achieve a very sharp female range and by default I no longer have a deep male voice and that is a HUGE improvement to my self-confidence, more than the nose surgery I did and the gender confirmation surgery I will do very soon. My voice was not that manly before the surgery, but was recognized as male anyway. Even with voice manipulation my previous voice usually went more to an androgyny side, and took an unholy amount of effort to sound somewhat feminine and that was with me talking in low voice. The surgeon also said I no longer would be able to scream that loud, and I hope I do not need to while I live. I learned some self-defense anyway. He only said to me to for a while not talk very, very much and to not scream. MtF people did not had voice surgery in the past, so I am happy with what I could get. At the photo you can see what he did to my vocal chords. This surgery is not a thyroplasty, it was a "Wendler glotoplasty'. The surgeon believed it could have more stable results, as according to him sometimes a thyroplasty could revert in a patient with time, losing part or all of the surgery benefits. He ran a throat exam after the surgery, and almost 2 months later his chosen technique is still being successful. It endured me getting H3N2, having fever for almost 1 week and coughing. I made a great effort to not cough too hard though. I got the flu more two times but as I had already gotten it, its effect were weaker. I also vomited once, something which could damage the surgery stitches, but the stitches resisted finely. Perhaps it would need constant exposure to the stomach acids for it to undo your surgery. As for the stitches, you will feel them more as your throat heals, they will fall by themselves with time. People will laugh while you are hoarse though, at least the ignorant people from where I live, as I said Brazil northeast is a poor region. I do rather share my voice progress using links from my site, the link will probably not change but if it does you can request me a new one at the comments:Voice before - https://yukoo.art/audio/mtf_vo...

Voice before manipulated - https://yukoo.art/audio/mtf_vo...

Still healing voice with almost 2 months - https://yukoo.art/audio/mtf_vo...
Some may question my sanity in showing my old voice, many MtF people such as myself do not as there are a lot of nasty people at the internet who can use what to mock us; but I lived long enough to simply no longer care. Whatever. Giving a more accurate idea of what the surgery do to those who want it is much more important to me. I could also talk more, but probably most nowadays would not care to read as they prefer more "fast-food" texts. There is a lot of voice training and healing for me in the future though. Hope this information was useful to you.