Hi and welcome!
I have been battling Graves disease since 2010. I managed to go into remission twice, even got weaned off the methamizole and maintained healthy thyroid levels for a period of 9 months once and six months the second time. But then both times in Junes, I had sudden and severe recurrences of my Graves disease. My endocrinologist said it's possible that since it's an autoimmune disorder, when my seasonal pollen allergies flared up in June, it triggered my Graves - the whole immune system being related and all.
I finally gave up battling and got the radioactive iodine treatment last week to treat my thyroid. I got the smaller dose of radiation (15 millicuries) -- it has a higher chance that it will simply beat my thyroid into submission and that I'll return to normal thyroid function, and a lower chance of completely killing my thyroid. But it has a higher chance of not working at all and that I'll need to be retreated in a year. I think the chances are something like 30%/50%/20% (as in 50% chance my thryoid will simply die).
Last time I started the medication in June (2014) and it took really two months to feel healthy again, but I didn't get a normal T3 level until September. Then I had to have a root canal, which my endocrinologist said would aggravate my graves, and my levels shot up again (along with my heart rate) for a few weeks. Then they fell steadily until in December, I actually had a *low* T3 reading (but still very low TSH).
They're saying that over the next six months, they'll just have to watch what happens. My thyroid has sped back up, like they said it would after the radiation treatment. It should start to slow down in the next week or two and will level out sometime in the next six months.
My understanding of Methamizole is that about 40% of people take it, get down to normal, get off of the medication and then never have a problem again. If you get a recurrence of Graves, your chances of methamizole curing you again drop down to like 15%. If you get two recurrences, don't ever count on living without Methamizole. Now I know that in Europe, treatment with methamizole is preferred to treatment with radioactive iodine. But my endocrinologist strongly recommended I not treat with methamizole for life, due to a rare freaky but dangerous side effect. They talked to you about watching out for a severely sore throat, right? It's very, very rare, but does happen.
So now I'm just hoping that I'm one of the lucky ones, and my thryoid will be beaten into submission by the radiation and behave properly.
As for tips - I guess I wish I had avoided large amounts of iodine. I started eating sushi a couple of times a week before my last flare up. I had no idea that seaweed has so much iodine in it! It has something like 5000 mcg of iodine per serving. Another high iodine food might only have 75mcg (like cod or iodized salt). Anyhow, the thyroid uses iodine to make T3 and T4, so it's kind of like stacking up loads of fuel near a furnace that's overheating.
If your heart is feeling fluttery and beating very fast, don't exercise! My doctor who loves exercise and got very happy about my pedometer is also very careful to say that if my heart starts beating too fast, I need to slow down. He says it's not worth having a heart attack, and that's a real risk when the Graves disease is active and your thyroid hormone is too high.
Good luck and feel free to ask me anything