If you are visiting this Caring Bridge page, you are a friend of Bobby, Gloria and Amanda Stewart. I am a lifelong friend and neighbor, Wynn Grisham. I will post updates here, hopefully twice a day, in an effort to share news about Bobby's progress. By keeping this page up to date, I hope to take some of the burden of keeping everybody informed off of Gloria and Amanda. As many of you know, caregiving is hard and time consuming.
One thing is for sure, Bobby Stewart is well known and well loved. There are so many friend groups that I hope this page will reach....golf buddies, mountain friends, co-workers, high school and college friends to name a few. And then there are also Gloria and Amanda's many friends. One story I like to tell is that no matter where in the world I have traveled, if I meet someone that has heard of Carrollton, most of the time the first thing they will ask me is if I know Bobby Stewart! Everybody has a Bobby story! So please follow along while I try to tell this part of Bobby's story.
On Sunday afternoon, January 21st, Bobby was taken to the local emergency room with what appeared to be symptoms of a heart attack. That was quickly ruled out and scans revealed that he had suffered a life threatening aortic dissection. You can visit
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/16743-aortic-dissection for a full explanation of what this means. He was taken by helicopter to Emory St. Joseph's hospital in Atlanta for emergency surgery that night. Fortunately, the best cardiothoracic surgeon in the state was available though he was not optimistic about Bobby's chances of surviving the surgery. Based upon his experience, he told Gloria that he did not expect Bobby to make it through the surgery, but there was a small chance. Thankfully, Bobby proved him wrong and did survive surgery!
Bobby is heavily sedated on a ventilator in the CVICU at St. Joseph's. His chest incision will remain open for the first few days of recovery in case there is an emergency need to go back into surgery. The surgery to close the chest will be sometime this week depending on how Bobby progresses. He will be in CVICU for at least the rest of the week.
