Better today
Hello all. My wife, MaryBeth, has returned to hang out with Mom and me in NJ. It’s nice to have her back, though, the kids (and her mother) really enjoyed having her back over the weekend. The weather here in NJ has, for all intents and purposes, been spectacular: very little humidity and warm, but not hot, temperatures. This kind of weather great for the walks my doctors want me to take. At least twice a day (if not more), Mom and I have walked the length of her 1/2 mile drive (it’s not so much a driveway as a right of way road from her place to Scrapetown Rd.). I even made the 2nd walk today without having to hold my stomach — Ooooh, the progress!
As an update, here’s what my tummy looks like now. Notice that, per my updates, my incision is getting better (though, the bruising around the incision is getting more pronounced. (I was tempted to put the image right into this blog post, but I didn’t want to traumatize any of you (despite how much better I look right now).
Lastly, I was looking over my paperwork from the hospital and I wanted to clarify that I did NOT have a standard Whipple procedure. Instead I had Pylorus Preserving Pancreaticoduodenectomy (PPPD). Essentially, it’s a version of the Whipple procedure in which the pylorus (the part of the GI system that connects the stomach to the duodenum) is not resected with the rest of the duodenum. Based on what I was able to find online, the PPPD has essentially the same surgical outcomes as a standard Whipple (e.g., in terms of blood loss, recovery time in hospital, survival rates, etc.) but the PPPD tends to have fewer post-surgical gastrointestinal complications (e.g., gastric dumping). (Geeky, yes, but hey what do you expect when I have time on my hands and an Internet to search?!?)
Merle