Ingrown nail bed?

I have had numerous ingrown toenails through out my life and as a result I have had surgery to permanently fix them. I had my last surgery some time around 1 to 1 1/2 years ago. Well, the symptoms on the same side are back. It even looks as if that I have an ingrown toenail, but the strange thing is that there is no nail on that side, just the nail bed, due to the surgery of course. Could it be that the nail bed has hardened and proceeded to become ingrown?
Like I said before it feels the same exact way as if there was a toenail there and it was ingrown. Does anyone have any ideas?