oops -I'm happy to talk abut it (for what its worth - I found counselling afterwards hugely helpful as I was in a right mess at time - just look at any of my old posts at the time if you want a flavour of how mad it sent me.). I know that you haven't decided on your options yet, but below is my experience of what happened (and I do totally undrestand as I needed to know what happened to beforehand when I was waiting).
What they do is give you 2 tablets about 2 days before you go in to help seperate placenta etc (I may be hazy here on details but basically it helps to start off the birth process and the termination). Apart from emotional issues, it can make you feel a bit sick so they keep you in for observation for an hour or so to make sure you're ok (I wasn't sick).
Then two days later you go back to hospital where they start to give you a series of pessaries (just like putting a tampon in - to be honest after a while you do stop caring about the indignity of it all and I was always very prudish about that ). I think that you have about 4 of these at 2/3 hour intervals.
About an hour or so after the first one I started to get period type cramps, which carried on getting worse (they do give you paracetamol which helps initially). After about /7 hours I had quite a temperature and was feeling quite fluy (I think this was more stress than anything). Pain /contractions got gradually more intense (and had quite severe sickness/diarrhea which I think is quite a normal thing ....) - eventually gave birth after about 16 hours . Birth was awkward as baby was breach so ended up with both doctor and midwife having to try and manoeuvre my little on out.
We were allowed to see our little boy (and could hold him) - he was lovely. I think one of my biggest fears was he was some gory monster. If you feel up to it, you may want to hold him but I would strongly suggest a photo of the little one . I was very anti this before the termination but someone who had been through similar suggested I do it and I'm glad I did as I have found the photos very comforting in the months since.
Re pain - I wont deny it got quite painful in last hour and I had morphine -it was more sore for the couple of hours afterwards. I ended up having an epidural as not all the placenta had been removed so needed some intervention to do it.
Re recovery - I was very weak physically and run down for about a week (we went away about a week afterwards which looking back was too soon as I was still in the bewildered state). but physically I did stop bleeding qutie soon (they say up to 2 weeks but it took me about a week) and after about a month I'd say I was more of less ready for normal physical life (ie doing exercise etc).
I am of course ignoring the emotional aftermath which is seismic and obviously everyones experience is different-
ARC was very helpful as has already been mentioned as was counselling.