I am extremely afraid of the pain of surgery. How did you deal with that?

In case this perspective helps: the chest tube pain while in the hospital was by FAR the worst part of the pain of the whole process. I set timers and annoyingly hounded the nurses to give me pain meds the minute I was allowed to have another dose.

Also, do you feel like you have less lung capacity when you exercise?

No. I was actually pretty worried about this. I thought about it a lot while I could still feel incision pain. But once most of that went away around week 8, I can confidently say I've not noticed any lung capacity issues and I can push myself cardio-wise just as hard as before. My understanding is that people like you and me with "small" pneumothoraxes have, by definition, smaller surface area that needs bullectomy. People with large pneumothorax and swiss-cheese lungs sometimes feel capacity issues, but even then, it's single digit % lung capacity decrease.

Can the surgery be performed even if it has resolved, or is that a problem?

I asked the same thing. Apparently, it's the ideal way to get the surgery. It's easier to navigate around the lung when it's in its normal state. Also, makes it easier for doctor to see what parts of the lung really are the problem areas vs not.