Yeson VFS Experience - Day 1 of 3
Examinations on the day before Vocal Feminization Surgery - diary log
Here is an extract from my journals following day 1 at Yeson Voice Clinic, before I got my VFSRAC vocal feminization surgery.
I arrive for the consultation, go up to the reception on the 4th floor, they greet me by name.
I fill in some form with name, phone, and some questions about my voice. I make the outstanding payment for the day 3 botox.
After filling in the form, I sit in the waiting area. Apparently i missed a sheet. I then meet my main guide for my stay, the person who translates Korean to English.
She tells me the instructions for tomorrow:
I am to arrive at 7.50am
The procedure takes around an hour
I get discharged at 4pm
For food there are option of 3 soups. I went with the vegan pumpkin soup, and they said they would get me a vegan ice pop for after surgery too.
She lets me know that they do 2 surgeries per day, or 8 per week1
She then brings me down to do various test.
I first went get an ECG and blood test. She brought me to the room, I lay on the bed and pulled up my top. The nurse attaches the ECG probes to my chest, as well as some clamps to my wrists and ankles. She read my heart beat. It wasn’t reading correct the first time, so fixed it and did it again. She then ripped the old sheet and binned it, looked at the normal one, and i had the 6 lines of ECG which looked normal.
The nurse then took my blood, put on an elastic band on my upper arm, and told me to clench my wrist. Then, with a relatively large needle, stabbed the inner crease of my arm. It was slightly painful, but manageable. She took 10ml of blood from me, then removed the needle, and put pressure on my stab wound with a cloth, and put a bandage over it.
I then sat in the waiting room again, and could ask more questions.
Second, we went to get my vocal folds examined. The nurse first took a picture of me, then told me to sit on the edge of my seat, and lean forwards, elbows resting on my knees, and head up, and stick tongue out. The nurse then put some cloth on my tongue, and inserted the metallic camera rod thing into my throat through my mouth, and told me to make some sounds: “aaahh” first at normal untrained voice, then at a higher pitch voice, then again at a lower pitch voice. Then the same three sounds again. This was fine, but got slightly uncomfortable toward the end. This was a recording of my vocal folds at normal speed.
Then after this, she did the same, but with another metal rod camera stuck down my throat, and the same sounds needed to be made for a shorter period of time. This was the slow-motion recording of my vocal folds.
We then went out and waited a bit more in the original waiting room.
Thirdly, we went back down and did recordings of me speaking: My name, date of birth, patient number, some different vowel sounds, 2 coughs, sigh, and “hey”. Then I said the rainbow passage with untrained voice, and then repeated it with a trained voice (I hadn’t practiced in a while so it was bad, but that didn’t matter.)
We finished the recording, and had to do more recordings, but this time with an air flow and air pressure monitor in front of my mouth. I had to make an “ahhhhh” sound for as long as i could, and had to repeat it a second time. It was within the normal range when I asked. The screen showed a graph with a bunch of dots and a waveform. With the same mask on my mouth, I then needed to do the grandfather passage. First untrained, then trained. It showed another graph.
I return to the waiting room, wait a while, and get told I will be going for an x-ray.
This involves getting a car ride to another building. I sit with the other person who is getting the surgery the same day as me, who I learn had just arrived. We drive, we go up an elevator, we wait a minute. I am told to go and take off my top and put on a different top. I go to the xray room and stand against some panel, and I rest my chin on some thing against the wall. They press the button, and it’s done after a few seconds. I then return to put normal top back on, and wait a few minutes more, and we get driven back to the main Yeson clinic again.
I then wait in the waiting room a bit more. And I get to see Dr. Kim.
Dr. Kim asks me some questions about my voice. Do i get tremors? Do I have issues with my voice? I say not really, I think it’s mostly worked fine, other than being too masculine, and perhaps being a bit quiet.
He then also gets me to say “ahhh”, sprays my nose with weird advance spray thing, and sticks a camera thing down my nostril, and gets me to say “ahhh” at a normal and high pitch.
We sit and he tells me about things from my voice tests. He first shows a normal voice, then shares with me that my voice is kinda weak and has tremors. The data from the “ahhh” before shows this.
Looking at the airflow and pressure tests, the pressure my voice makes is like 4x higher than it normally needs to be, and the mean aiflow during voicing is like 10x higher than it should be. So my voice is pretty inefficient, and so gets tired when talking too loud. Interesting to have some mechanistic explanation to why my voice would get tired pretty easily, I didn’t know this.
Then went back to sit with my cutest ever wifey and i was soo soo happy because she’s so nice and I’m so lucky to have a nice and cute girlfriend like her <3 <3 <3.
And she likes reading over my shoulder and thinking “you only say that because I’m reading over your shoulder” but i think it’s true anyway >w<
Then we were done. We were told to come promptly the next day at 7.50am for the surgery, not too early but not late either. We left the clinic for the day.
I calculate this means they make up to ~$4M/year in revenue from surgeries, though there were a few other clients who did things other than surgery too.