I just had one repaired in November. It was day surgery and I was home 5 hours after I left my house. The surgery itself took about 20 minutes where they repaired the hernia using some sort of mesh from what I was told since I was sleeping while it was done. I was surprised that there were no stitches to remove afterwards since the surgeon used some sort of glue to seal up the 3 to 4 inch incision. There was really no pain afterwards although I was in considerable pain in the days leading up to the surgery. Since my job is physical they recommended four weeks off before returning to work in order to let it heal up and not lift anything more than 10 pounds during that time. As far as surgeries go this was much easier to recover from in my opinion than the umbilical hernia I had repaired a year ago. If I had a desk type job I think I could have returned to work as soon as the drugs wore off.