I had an open Whipple surgery 12 weeks ago and am finally able to say that I feel pretty good. The road to recovery was slow for the first 5 weeks and then things gradually started getting better from week to week. Going in to it, I was most concerned about recovering my appetite and not losing weight post-surgery. Fortunately, I was able to eat fairly well one week after surgery and never had any major gastrointestinal issues. The main issue was pain and discomfort from the incision and itchy sensitive skin around the incision. It just took time for this to heal.

I had my surgery done at Johns Hopkins and my surgeon has considerable experience doing robotic Whipple procedures. I was expecting/hoping for a robotic surgery, but plans changed at the last minute due to some unexpected pancreatitis-related issues I had leading up to the surgery. My tumor was also in close proximity to blood vessels, which complicated things. Having been through an open surgery and the experience of dealing with the incision, I feel that recovery from a robotic procedure has got to be a lot easier to deal with. But whether this is an option will depend on where you are and your specific circumstances.