And I had the opposite experience. A left hip replacement almost three years ago. No post surgical pain at all. never touched a pain pill.

Most of it comes down to doing extensive research and finding a truly skilled surgeon. You can start with ratings (e.g., my local magazine does an annual doctor rating issue based on survey with other doctors) but I believe one needs to go well beyond that.

My criteria were:

Newest and best method
Extensively and successfully experienced in that method
Great mind
Great hands

I found one in Jimmy Chow. He is the prime inventor of the "superpath" method of hip replacement (IMO the successor to the anterior approach). Nonetheless, despite being an engineer/inventor, he told me that of all the requirements for finding a great surgeon, extensive successful experience is the most important. If it came down to a choice between a surgeon who has done hundreds of anterior or even posterior hip replacements, but has only recently transitioned to superpath and has only done about 20 of them, my Superpath inventor would recommend going with the experienced surgeon using a lesser method.

My brother and I both were scheduled for knee replacements in around the beginning of the month. He is in the midwest aand went with a highly rated traditional knee surgeon. He was bone on bone but with no significant misalignment or pain. I had severe misalignment and pain from a nerve impingement caused by the bad knee. I went with Dr. Chow. I wanted a minimally painful replacement that would not unnecessarily cut and resect my ACL (i.e, a bicruciate retaining implant--BCR). I found a video of Dr. Chow doing exactly what I wanted in 2020 at an orthopedic innovations conference. He did a BCR and a "Functional Alignment" and I had almost no post surgical pain (minor pain when I first stand up from the surgical site area that mostly abated when I walked about twenty feet or so). My brother's surgery was five days before mine and he is on opions and Journavax.

My point is do tons or research. After you have done that, do tons more. All surgeons are not created equal. Feces can still happen but you can minimize its chances by finding the needle in the haystack (I am not sure that there are more than a handful of surgeons in the country that I would have trusted to do a BCR for me). So try to find that needle.

In general, hip replacement surgery is very successful. But the law governing bell curves still applies. My goal is to move myself as far as possible to the positive side of the bell curve. If one is in pain, I would encourage that person to get replacement surgery; but I would also recommend that that person do the kind of research I am talking about to maximize the chances of a successful outcome.

As to fixing it, there is a term used for orthopedic surgeons who repair problems that come up: "revision surgeon". Revisions are generally more complex than the original so not all orthopedic surgeons do revisions. Of those that do, not all do it well or often.

I would look for a skilled and experienced revision surgeon. For example, Dr. Chow does about 20% of his work on revisions. That doesn't mean that the original work that he is having to revise was faulty. Some of it likely was faulty but much of it is also bad luck.

If it is possible, I would look for a revision surgeon at a different practice. I wouldn't want to trust a surgeon in the practice group to accurately state that his colleague screwed up.