Mine don't hurt at all now. Not even a little bit.
I watched a kung fu movie where the hero repeatedly spears his flattened hands fingers first into red hot gravel, and I did that for a while with warm soft dry beach sand. Toughened them up quick. Dried mung or aduki beans are good too, especially for learning where the new ends are (the painless but panicky razor cut feeling). I never used gravel though.
If it keeps hurting, or if you have difficulty doing things, find a doc who knows about tidying up the ends. I had some ends trimmed after a month or so. It's not straightforward, you have to consider the hand as a whole and what it is used for to decide where to put the scars, both the scars on the bone and the scars on the skin, and it's not a thing that the average doc will know about.
The average ER doc will try to save as much as he can - the specialist will try to create the best working hand he can. There's a big difference.
But do be thorough in choosing a doc, and do be a bit reluctant, nay squeamish, about having more bits chopped off - one chap I know had his nonfunctioning forefinger chopped off, it got in his way; he now regrets it, but you can't get them to put it back after.
The dexterity used to manipulate a tool comes largely in the wrist. Welding uses the elbows and shoulders too. The fingers do little more than grasp, generally providing only a small amount of movement which the wrist can duplicate.
For instance, assuming your wrist is okay, if you only have enough fingers left to grasp a pen after an injury, you can still write, you won't need to retrain to learn how. Your wrist can do all the movements without you even thinking about it.
Playing musical instruments without a full complement of fingers is a different matter, but hey, Django Rienhardt only had two fingers - if you really want to, you'll find a way.
I don't play - I can manipulate a bass guitar's strings, but I'm not very musical - but as I said before, people give me fiddly jobs to do despite having a lot of damage to my hands. I do piano finger exercises -
I - will - do - my - ex - er - ci- ses - I - will - do - my - ex - er - ci- ses -
to keep my fingers supple, and because I have extensive loss of touch sensation (but not pain sensation, that mostly came back) I have developed extra good hand-eye coordination to more than compensate.
Hmmm - having suffered all sorts of pain, and seen more, I've come to the conclusion that you should feel healing wounds, but they shouldn't hurt; and you should medicate accordingly. Don't take pain meds if you don't need them though, and don't take them long-term. And don't operate heavy machinery while taking percocets - oops!
:)
I'm not quite sure what you mean - if it's that you might get addicted, be aware of that - sure, be very aware of that - but if it's that taking meds will cause more pain later, or make it hurt for longer, and that macho-ing it out will make it hurt for a shorter time, or hurt less overall - well if it works for you that's fine, but medically it's not generally true.
It's hard to tell how long crushed fingers will hurt for, it depends on what's happened at the ends, but I'd guess no more than a week. You'll get aches and flashes for quite a while when you bang them too, until they toughen up.