I want to share my experience with getting FemLar with Dr. Thomas, AMA. I had my surgery roughly six months ago and my voice is still recovering. Dr. Thomas states that it takes up to a year to hear your final, fully healed results. Overall, this surgery has been tremendously helpful for boosting my confidence, I’m happy with my results so far. My results are linked at the end of this post.

Prior to my surgery, I tried a one-on-one vocal coach, TransVoiceLessons, and other educational sources for roughly one year. Honestly, I did not practice nearly as much as everyone recommends. I struggled hard. I could not make any meaningful and I hated hearing my voice and practicing. I’m an engineer by trade and I do have some understanding of acoustics. I blame some of my struggles on being very tall and having an extra-large larynx. Dr. Thomas even stated that I had a very large larynx and he was aggressive in how much he removed, which is what I had asked for. I think this should be acknowledged more, everyone has a different larynx size and having a larger larynx does make it harder to feminize your voice.

I found Dr. Thomas through the interview he did with Z at TransVoiceLessons. I did as much research as I could on his methods and analyzed the results on his website. In my opinion, women in their 20’s-30’s have the best odds of getting good results based on the audio samples I listened to. It’s also critical to do voice training even after surgery. The more you voice train before surgery, the easier it will be post-surgery to get the voice you want.

I scheduled my pre-op appointment for Monday and had surgery the next day on Tuesday. Dr. Thomas, after my pre-op appointment, gave me the opportunity to back out of surgery if I desired. I had no hesitations about moving forward with surgery. I was very clear on my goals and that I wanted him to be aggressive in reducing my larynx size, raising my thyrohyoid, and reducing my vocal cord length.

Surgery went well, there were no complications. I stayed with a friend for a week while recovering. I had no issues not talking, I’m a naturally quiet person. I did feel a lot of muscle strain while sleeping with my head elevated from my mouth hanging open after falling asleep. I solved this by using medical tape to hold my jaw up while I slept. I did what I could to remove any strain on my throat or muscles around my throat. Another thing that may work is a jaw sling, like what is used post jaw surgery. I drank a lot of protein powder drinks to get nutrition because I personally wanted to avoid straining while swallowing. Do not eat peanut butter post FemLar, I had one bite while recovering and noped out of that.

Dr. Thomas and his office staff were great. My only complaint is that they are super slow to communicate most of the time. And they weren’t particularly great about helping me with getting my insurance to reimburse me for this procedure. Even though they said they would do what they could to help. I’m still trying to get my insurance to cover this. At this point, I will be happy to get anything reimbursed by insurance. Even if I get nothing back, I still consider the surgery worth the cost.

I had a four-month check-up with Dr. Thomas and did a voice recording/vocal cord examination. I live near Portland and asked if I could stop by. He was happy to schedule an appointment with me. He looked at my vocal cords and noted that they had healed well. However, my vocal cords were still somewhat swollen/not fully closing when I produce sound. If that swelling doesn’t go away, I can undergo an in-office laser treatment to correct this and further increase my pitch a little more.

Post surgery, my voice was shot. I could barely talk. For the first couple of months, I was inaudible in loud bars, stadiums, clubs, and other loud places. Even six months out, it feels like I am yelling just for people to hear me. BUT, that is kind of how I have always been as a very quiet person. During my recovery, I used a text to speech app to do most of my communicating for me.

My pitch and resonance have both greatly improved. There are four recordings linked below. I also included an image of the spectrogram of each recording here, https://imgur.com/XM2QWcJ . This chart really shows how much my resonance has improved.

My incision scar is mostly gone as well, I used silicone scar gel religiously for five months to reduce its appearance. I don’t have any redness anymore around the scar and it mostly just looks like a wrinkle now. I’m also super excited about not having an adam’s apple anymore, https://imgur.com/OIp2D50 . Here is what my adam’s apple looked like pre-FemLar, https://imgur.com/SMZVTjH .

If I want to be able to use my voice extensively in the morning, I do have to make sure I have time to warm it up. Otherwise, my voice will sound rough and break up as I talk. I also need to stay very hydrated. If I’m dehydrated, I get more thick mucus buildup on my vocal cords and it makes me sound rough as well.

Today, I’m continuing vocal training to further improve my voice. I plan on having a checkup with Dr. Thomas towards the end of this year to discuss increasing my pitch. My guess is that I won’t do that. I do think that vocal training is the correct solution to further improve my voice. My upper pitch making an “eee” sound is now around 400Hz whereas prior to surgery it was around 350Hz. I don’t believe my pitch range is my problem. I just need more practice and to continue tweaking my voice in the direction I want.

I hope this helps anyone looking at this procedure. Feel free to ask me anything below!

TLDR, Voice Timeline through FemLar:

Male Voice, 2 months pre-FemLar, https://soundcloud.com/strmy-943520755/male-voice-pre-femlar-2-months/s-UCRUqKfONM8?si=45646b105e7145e6a5ae867de0493e10&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Female Attempt, 2 months pre-FemLar, https://soundcloud.com/strmy-943520755/fem-attempt-pre-femlar-2-months/s-hHs1LPfocC7?si=fe38a31189d647558c1b9c32bf616134&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Female Attempt, 3 months post-FemLar, https://soundcloud.com/strmy-943520755/fem-attempt-post-femlar-3-months/s-soTgAnysIAJ?si=c17a99a73e584419a3eb9ed6b04f6a83&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Normal Voice, 6 months post-FemLar (today), https://soundcloud.com/strmy-943520755/normal-voice-post-femlar-6-months/s-OQpzO6Cmcmn?si=08f829dd3f9d4de9856245543b10f237&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing