Regarding pain:
I got my legs broken, the left leg had a bad osteotomy, right leg had cracks, 3cm of my fibulas were removed, I got trauma nails shoved down my bone canals, 5 distal screws were put under each knees, I got pierced with pins for the fixators and those fixators were heavy and tore on my legs.
So, of course it hurt.
In fact, I was experiencing the worst pain in my life when I woke up after surgery.
And I can take a lot.
It lasted for several days and only the highest allowed dosage of morphine could bring the pain level down to "bearable".
It can all be found in my diary.
But everyone is different and so are their diaries.
I woke up with complications, many others don't have complications.
I did external LON, others choose LATN and have two smaller surgeries instead, do internal nailing, or even choose externals only which is less invasive.
My body doesn't respond well to painkillers, others might only need small dosages in order to reduce the same amount of pain.
Pain is also subjective.
I wrote parts of my diary while I was still in the hospital, others prefer to make retrospective diaries and maybe just don't remember exactly how they really felt.
During the lengthening phase, I also had pain, especially in my right foot.
I even got a pin site infection which was also painful and which I didn't mention at first.
I just wasn't sure what it was and what I should do about it, so what should I write?
Then I simply forgot about it until someone advised/reminded me to put it in my diary.
Something like this could very well happen to others I guess, especially when they don't have the time to write that often or do it retrospectively.
So I don't think that most LL veterans are lying or purposefully playing down things when it comes to pain.
Regarding complications:
I had to stop lengthening due to complications and it killed me. But I kept on writing and a good number of people just bashed me for going to India and turned my diary which I worked so hard for into a war zone. I had a different opinion back then, because it was hard for my suffering me to except reality. But the point is, that once you run into complications and report them, the majority is not interested in you as a person anymore and your diary gets derailed. Then it's only about bad doctors, conspiracy theories, bad nations, bad LL techniques and an allegedly stupid you.
People read other peoples' diaries, see what happens when you report major complications and I bet that most of them simply don't want to be exposed to the same sh*t when they already have enough trouble. I can imagine this also to be the reason for why diaries just stop shortly after hints of complications were mentioned or start playing them down.
Disclaimer:
Sorry to the ones who actually supported me the hole time in my diary and over pm, I know your names :-)