Yes, hernia is a defect of the abdominal wall, that is supposed to keep the organs inside the abdomen. When there is a hernia, the bowel can go through the hole. Most of the times, the bowels go back to the abdomen, but sometimes it can get stuck (incarcerated hernia). This is when you can get into trouble. A stuck bowel will not have enough blood supply because the vessels are all twisted. If not repaired right away, you can get bowel necrosis (dying of tissues ), which we would call strangulated hernia. I think this is what Whitaker had. He probably had to remove a part of this necrotic bowel and fix the hernia so that does not happen again. Takes a while to recover. If he had just a incarcerated hernia without necrosis, the recovery is fast, because you just need to fix the hernia itself, so I assume based on the team announcement that he had a strangulated hernia