My Yeson VFSRAC Early Recovery
Recovery Materials and My current progress
After 2 months of silence post Yeson VFSRAC, you can go back to speaking normally, but need to do voice training for a while. I will describe the recovery instructions, and my current progress.
Current Recovery
While the no-speaking period is 2 months, the full recovery takes longer.
While one might hope that you get a speedy easy recovery after being able to speak again, it can be a bit disappointing at first.
It’s kind of hard to know whether you are just in the “slow recovery” case, or in the “I coughed too hard and broke the sutures” case, and you can’t really inspect it. So it is easy to worry. The sutures are probably more sturdy than you think though.
My Recovery
My initial starting pitch when doing the rainbow passage, was:
pre-surgery: ~119Hz (102-145Hz)
The day I started speaking again, I measured it prior to voice training, and found that it had been unchanged:
0 days speaking: ~121Hz (103-140Hz)
I was pretty worried and slightly disappointed, my vocal range mostly felt unchanged. The exercises maybe make it seem like the higher pitches are easier than before.
1 week speaking: 147Hz (113-207Hz)
It’s hard to measure, but I think my vocal weight has also changed somewhat.
There are some ways in which it feels like it “didn’t do much”, though other than my voice feeling kind of weak overall (as if I was in a loud night club or something recently stressing my voice), it feels probably easier to do higher pitches than lower pitches now than it did before but it’s hard to remember when you haven’t spoken in 2 months and it’s all slightly more difficult from feeling weak.
I also, while writing this, realized I maybe that I had misinterpreted some of the exercises, so that might be a factor, I will try do them better this week.
[I will probably update this with progress for the next few weeks]
Recovery Voice Training Exercises.
There are a few exercises we are told to do. These are mostly pretty standard.
It’s annoying because you need to do these sets like 4-5 times per day.
Warm Up
These are done first at a normal frequency (200Hz), 2 times, then followed by
Lip Trills (breath and let lips frill)
/m/ sound
/mi/ sound
/m/ + /a,i,o,e,u/
Then repeat these but going smoothy up and down in pitch
Main Power exercises
You want to individually “hmm”, for as long as you can. Try to make sure to be using “head voice” which you can verify by holding your finger on your nose, and seeing that it vibrates when you make noise.
Make sure this is at 200Hz note as a starting point.
Sustain (ie: do it for as long as you can)
Then repeat 4 more times, increasing pitch by one note each time. Ie:
( /m/ ) x (200Hz, …. 4 notes)
Repeat, but this time do a “mi” sound before:
( /mi/ ) x (200Hz, …. 4 notes)
Do the hmm sound sound, followed by one vowel sound, repeated for each vowel sound. Repeat for all the different notes.
( /m/ + /a,i,o,e,u/ ) x (200Hz, …. 4 notes)
Repeat, the last but last one, but each time do a 3-point scale (C D E D C). repeat increasing pitch each time.
Scaled 3 notes (Going up and down 3 steps)
( /mi/ + /a,i,o,e,u/ ) [200z, +1 note, +2 notes.] * [5 starting notes]
Repeat, but with 5 point scale
Resonance Technique
Try to make sure that you are using head voice again, and start at 200Hz.
[ /ing/ + /a/ ] * [5 different starting pitches], sustained
[ /ing/ + /a/ ] * [5 different starting pitches], scaled
Then repeat with different phrase:
[ /mm/ + /ya/ + /ing/] * [5 different starting pitches]. sustained
[ /mm/ + /ya/ + /ing/] * [5 different starting pitches]. scaled
Physical Exercises
Abdominal Breathing: breathe but try to keep ribs small and stomach changing in size.
Laryngeal Massage: First, hold your laringeal cartillage/voice box, then massage it and move it side to side. Second, use thumb and index finger about the laringeal cartillage and and rub/encircle. Third, in a v shape use thumb and index finger to rub downwards from there multiple times. Forth, individually, hold one of the two diagonal things to the side of your neck slightly and hold it and rub it up and down.
Bubble Exercises: Have a large straw with flat bottom into a cup of water. Start with a hum phonating into water. Then do glides. Then do scales.
It’s also better to record yourself doing these. Once you have an idea of what the 200Hz pitch is, as then I could do it while on a walk if nobody was around. Not sure if that is good.