Graves disease, radioactive pill or surgery for thyroid?

I jus wanted to hear from those who had the radio active pill, and from those who had the thryoid surgery, which one is better. and if you could choose again, which one you would choose. im relying more to the surgery. but i wanted to hear from those who have gone thru this. i have a goiter and i am so tired of taking a bunch of medications. also, i wanted to know how the recovery was. thank you so much for the answers. appreciate it.

I had the radio active pill. Either way you'll continue to be on meds because in most cases you'll need a replacement hormone (like synthroid) once you had the RAI or the surgery. With the RAI (radio active idodine) you'll need to live alone for about 3 days, use only disposal plates/forks (unless you have a dishwasher). It doesn't hurt and I really wouldn't say there is a "recovery time" you just can't be close to people for 3 days because of the radiation in your body. And if you are planning on getting pregnant, you have to wait about 6 months. If you are pregnant, you can NOT have the radio active treatment. There is a mandatory pregnancy test before they will give you treatment.

With the surgery, you'll have longer recovery time, plus the scar from the surgery (which fades pretty quickly... my sister just had it done). But she had to have the RAI after the surgery, so we was stuck with both.

Either way, good luck to you. Hope this helped.

my friends mom did both

For graves disease, you don't need surgery. If it is cancer, you would need surgery and the radioactive pill. I had a pre-cancerous tumor on my thyroid, had to have it surgically removed. It was fast-growing and would've taken over my neck. Since surgery, I now have a nasty scar because I freaked out and removed the surgery bandage too soon. I wouldn't opt for using the radioactive pill if I were you. You get pretty sick. If you go for surgery, the surgeon is usually very successful in cutting across your own natural skin creases so it nearly looks invisible. My scar would be just about nothing if I only left the bandage alone....