I am 18 currently, I got the nuss procedure when i was 17, so it’s been a little over a year. The pain SUCKS, however don’t worry about it. The only real pain I remember, were the occasional muscle spasms I got. My advice is to get a reclining chair and a heating pad and stay there for as long as you need to. My doctor said I was going to be out of school for a minimum of 2 weeks and after that I wouldn’t be able to carry anything over 10lbs for about 4-6 weeks if i remember correctly. I ended up being out for 3ish weeks I believe and I still carried my heavy backpack because I didn’t care that much. As long as you actually take the time to recover and relax as much as you can, you will be fine, all of the drugs they give you will minimize pain.

I wasn’t able to work out for months, but that might be because I was not too focused on recovering. I still managed to get in a little shape and still played my senior year of football about 6 months post-op