Give me a moment for and exclamation. Wow! When I played back on Vocaroo, while I was pleased with the result, it still sounded a little sultry. It's nice to hear my voice without having to stress it at all. I wonder if the removal of the nodules added to the effect. It was only in the last few months that I was starting to have more frequent problems, which is kind of why I started to panic.
I think I'm still healing. My voice is at a slightly different pitch each day and at different times of the day. Today, it recorded just a tad bit lower for a relaxation recording that I did. Of course, I didn't stretch out my diaphragm then, either.
I did have immediate difficulty even just whispering immediately after the surgery, and after the days of voice rest, it would just come and go. After an intensive belly dance class one week later, I opened my mouth, and my pitch had leaped even higher.
In the last couple of weeks, I was testing my singing voice, and like learning to play the clarinet back in junior high, I would suddenly screech over certain notes. Finally, about 9 days ago, I joined a singing circle with my speech pathologist, Stacey Cole, and after some really good warmups, I was able to start hitting what I imagined were those notes, and squeaked only once.
On Sunday, I injected myself into choir practice, and with the music director helped guide me up into full alto range and in tune and out of harmony. It was a little stressful, but part of the stress was in controlling my diaphragm.
I am so happy with my voice.
Her voice is much improved in terms of comfortable speaking pitch approximately 2 months after KTP laser tightening of her vocal cords. I am hesitant to attribute all of this improvement to the tightening although she finds it much easier to maintain a feminine voice since the procedure. She had excellent pharyngeal squeeze on her initial exam which should give her very good feminine resonance qualities.