Hey Nick,
Sorry to meet you on this journey. However, you are lucky that your Dad was able to have the Whipple surgery. Not nearly enough patients are diagnosed early enough to have surgery.
Since you don't know the name of the chemo he will be having, there really isn't much I can say. It is the current standard of care, when recovered from surgery, to have chemo called 5 FU concurrently with 5-6 weeks of radiation. After several weeks off to recover, the patient then starts six months of Gemzar with 3 weeks on and 1 week off. Often patients will have to forego treatment for a week or so if their WBC's are too low. Patients also often take shots of Procrit, Neupogen or injections of vitamin B12; sometimes blood transfusions may also be required.
There are some oncologists who treat with more aggressive chemo protocols; Dr. Fine @ Columbia in NYC started the GTX protocol (Gemzar, Tarceva, Xeloda) and has had very good results. He is said to have kept patients alive for 5 years who were given 3 months by their prior docs. There is a Dr. Bruckner in NYC who also uses very aggressive chemo protocols, many docs claim too aggressive. M D Anderson as well as Columbia are excellent in treating pc; others are very good also but these 2, along with Johns Hopkins are probably the best.
I visited your blog and see that you have visited the Johns Hopkins web site; did you also visit their online pc support board? If not, you should since there is a lot of wisdom to be gotten there from both patients and caregivers. Someone on that board has published all the different chemos that may be used in pc.
I wish your Dad good luck in his continued recovery.
Joan L