the problem with telling people about my experience of surgery recovery is that one of my minor superpowers is immunity to surgical pain.. I've had two major and one minor surgery and none of them have (directly) caused me pain during recovery. no idea why! it's not that the pain is there but I tolerated it—my pain tolerance is generally pretty middling. it's not that I was just too out of it for the pain to register either—I still felt plenty of pain from other things. just not the surgical sites themselves!
so unfortunately I'm not a great expert on "how much will such and such surgery hurt"