BY SHERI TRUSTY

Shelley Schutte struggled alone as her husband, battling dementia, slowly faded away. (Photo by Sheri Trusty)

Dave Schutte was a happy man. The constant flow of colorful words that peppered nearly every sentence weren’t evidence of anger. They were simply his own form of expression. Frivolity with a bit of flying fudge.

“He always had a smile. He smiled a lot,” said his wife, Shelley Schutte of Graytown.

Then Dave lost his lifelong job as a farmhand. He loved the work. He was a few years from seventy, still able to tend the crops and wrench the harvest from the land, but he was forced into early retirement, and early retirement forced him into depression.

And the smiles faded. Soon, Dave himself began to slowly fade away, too.

“He was a farmhand for years,” Shelley said. “Depression was a big part of what happened.”

Dave passed away on Feb. 27, about three years after he retired. He was three days away from his 70th birthday and three days away from the Schuttes’ 39th wedding anniversary. By the time he died, doctors gave him a possible diagnosis of Lewey Body Dementia. They aren’t entirely sure what was causing Dave’s brain to fail. His death certificate listed Parkinson’s disease, but that was the first time Shelley heard of the disease connected to her husband.

“He was never diagnosed with Parkinson’s. I found that out on his death certificate,” she said.

Whatever the cause of Dave’s dementia, Shelley lost her husband bit by bit for three years.

“We didn’t see this coming, and the doctors didn’t know what it was,” Shelley said. “It was a long three years, a really long three years.”

Shelley, who doesn’t have family in the area, was forced to maneuver through her husband’s illness alone. She tells her story to others so she can also tell them the things she learned, things that will help make their own journeys a little easier.

Shelley and Dave Schutte, who always smiled, laugh together in happier times. (Submitted photo)

Shelley’s first obstacle was a lack of a diagnosis. Dave needed round-the-clock care, but no nursing home would accept him without a diagnosis.

“The doctor didn’t know what was wrong, but he wouldn’t diagnosis him with dementia because he was too young,” Shelley said.

She finally pushed for a diagnosis and moved Dave into a nursing home, only to discover the care was dangerously substandard. She moved him to another one, but the long drive from home was difficult since she worked fulltime. In the end, she moved him to Riverview Nursing Home in Oak Harbor.

“Riverview was fantastic,” Shelley said.

Her next obstacle was deciphering the complications of Medicaid, which she described as “the most terrifying thing I think I have ever done.”

“Not only are you dealing with basically the loss of your loved one to a disease that robs them of everything…but you also have to deal with the governmental paperwork,” she said.

Shelley struggled alone until she met Jeanette Buckantz, an eligibility specialist at Ottawa County Department of Job and Family Services.

“When I first started this, I had no idea what to do. Jeanette answered all my questions,” Shelley said. “I am thankful for her guidance and help.”

While Shelley was struggling alone with the present, Dave’s mind had him living in the past. Sometimes, that brought levity to Shelley’s heavy days, like the day she arrived at the nursing home to find Dave had pushed wheelchairs to either side of the hallway. In his mind, one was a tractor and one was a hopper. Dave was in a nursing home, but he was also still out in the fields.

Shelley has two pieces of advice for people who are still walking the journey that ended for her at Dave’s gravesite. First, join the Memory People Facebook page for support.

“This is real people living real lives,” she said.

Secondly, don’t be afraid to ask for help. This was a hard lesson for Shelley, and one she wants others to learn more quickly than she did.

“Rely on family and friends. Learn to ask for help,” she said. “You need people to fall back on.”