Hey. I didn't have a hemi-thyroidectomy, but did have my full thyroid removed due to thyroid cancer.

The postive news is that if you do have thyroid cancer, they will likely just remove the rest of your thryoid and maybe some lymph nodes if there is spread, so...not really much worse than what you've already experienced. Obviously, you don't want to go through it again and if you also have lymph nodes removed, the operation will be a larger one, but it's not that much worse.

As I said, I had the full thyroidectomy and a neck dissection, where they removed something like 57 lymph nodes. I took about a month off work, and that was largely because I'm a teacher and my neck was kinda stiff, which meant I couldn't look around quickly or carry much in my left arm without it hurting my neck (I joked with colleagues that I would have come back a few days earlier apart from one class where I had two really difficult students who sat at opposite sides of the classroom and I had to look around quickly, 'cause whenever I was watching one, the other would start causing mischief!).

I will say I did not feel exhausted longer than about a week or so after the surgery. But everyone is different and it is still early days.

Has your thyoid function been checked?