Hi everyone and welcome to the newbies of this thread!

Jas I am doing well thanks. The obstructed breathing feeling didn't last too long at all. Was practically gone by 10 days post op. Is there any reason why your endo isn't recommending RAI or a thyroidectomy? I know how you feel about the weight issues. I am 35 kilos overweight now. Put on about another 6 kilo's since my Op in January But I think It's stabalised now and I'm on the right dose of thyroxine so now i guess the rest is up to me . . .

Hellrazd, what would you like to know? Well I'm going to be honest and tell you the warts and all story. As you know I had a total thyroidectomy and I have to say that 4.5 months later I am feeling really good, so I'm glad I had it done. I also look at it this way. It's a lot better to be on thyroxine for the rest of my life than the heavier anti-thyroid drugs which can cause other problems long term. Also better to now be pretty much stable and not having to worry about the graves playing up or having to adjust my med dosage all the time.
As for the operation itself. It was pretty straight forward and i was up and out of bed shuffling myself off to the toilet just a couple of hours later. (I refused to resort to using a bed pan, lol) I had very little pain in the operation site, but I did find the drainage tubes hanging out of each side of my neck annoying. Thankfully, they were taken out about 36 hours after the Op. Unfortunately my hospital stay ended up being a week because my parathyroid glands decided that they wanted to go into shock so i ended up getting quite severe hypocalcaemia. That was pretty weird - very tingly feeling in my hands, feet and lips. And one morning I woke up and It was like my facial muscles were paralised. I had to have a few rounds of calicum and activated vitamin D intraveniously, and I had to have 4 hourly blood tests to monitor the levels (that poor vein!) I was also put on 6 caltrate and 6 calcitriol tablets per day which I had to stay on for a few weeks. The thing that was hardest about my Op and the time I was in hospital was I was feeling very down and teary and emotional and quite irrational. I thought it was just the stress of the Op and being in hospital that caused this but I also later found out that one of the symptoms of hypocalcaemia is depression.

All that aside though, I AM happy i had thre Op and I AM happy that I chose the total thyroidectomy over thre RAI because I would'nt have been able to go within a meter of Charli for 10-12 days after the RAI and that would be inpossible. Plus my endo said I'd probably need more than 1 round of RAI to cure my condition.
Hope this helps!

Kitten2B, please don't be scared about the Op. As you are only having a partial thyroidectomy you are much less likely to have the hypocalcaemia issue that I had so you'll be fine. Also, don't worry about the camera up your nose to check your vocal chords. They spray an anaesthetic spray up your nose first and you don't feel a thing. Plus the process is very quick and it's quite interresting to see your own vocal chords on the TV screen (well I thought so anyway, lol)

Ooops I didn't mean to make this an essay . . .