ingrown toenail post surgery complication

I'm male and 22 years old. I have had three surgeries on an ingrown toenail in the last year. The first surgery occurred in france (living abroad at the time) where they cut out the side of the nail and went deep into the skin and then used electricity on the base to stop it from growing back. I've have been led to believe this is an old method not commonly in practice now. There was supposed to be a long healing process, which I never healed from in the 4 months left in my stay. When I came to the US I went to a podiatrist, and he told me that the last doctor left a piece of nail in the side and he removed it, after a month it started feeling better. I started running for a couple weeks but than the pain came back and I couldn't run anymore. I went to a third different doctor who said I had a new ingrown toenail and he removed it for a third time. He mentioned that there was a lot of scarring that he tried to take out in the area. He was also the one who told me about the first procedure. That was in september. Now, the pain is not as bad, but I have to keep antibiotic and pain relief cream on it or it starts hurting. I can't wear any shoes except for flip flops or it starts hurting, and I haven't been able to continue running.
The pain is not bad except when I wear shoes, and pressure is applied to the area.
Is this normal to have such a long healing process? Is it because of scarring? Could there be anything else wrong? Is it possible I might suffer from diabetes? Or Maybe nerve damage?
I appreciate any information, it's been a long time
Seeking help

I forgot to mention, it might be possible that the nail is growing back larger than they cut off, but I've only noticed that in last week so I might just confused. I don't think that is the source of the pain at least not for the majority of the time this has been a problem.

[FootDoc]

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You, of course, must understand that in attempting to answer your question, I must make many assumption, some or all of which may be incorrect, but could be easily cleared up if I could instead actually examine your foot. There are many ways to permanently remove an ingrowing side of a toenail, but what they boil down to is after physically removing the offending segment to do away with the nail matrix. This is accomplished either by actually excising the area in which that germinative tissue resides or destroying it in situ by various means and modalities. The problem with recurrence is a common one, and especially if previous procedures have left fibrous scar in the area while not completely removing or destroying all of the matrix tissue, subsequent attempts at chemical destruction may be mitigated by the existence of that blocking scar tissue. For that reason, when there have been multiple failures which have resulted in excessive scaring, I generally prefer a more radical surgical procedure which I find more likely to get the job done under these circumstances. Pain as you have been describing may be the result of a small portion of surviving matrix attempting to grow new nail through the blocking fibrous scar instead of the normal unblocked route even if eventually it is to catch the nail lip and ingrow again. These are just my thoughts regarding your stated issue, and they may or may not reflect the reality of your case.

Incidentally, for others reading this, THIS is the sort of question to which a reasonable response can be offered, as, unlike many of the scenarios presented here, which are truly individualized, unique complications and require a hands-on examination for any possible real understanding of what is going on, this represents a common and non-unique situation which is seen many times by most podiatrists. Even then, only a response based on a number of likely judgments can be offered.