Family fights for dad’s recovery
NEW MILFORD — Artie Schuff finds it hard to sit still.
The electrician has spent a life in motion, working with his hands in the backyard or fishing or chopping wood.
Last summer, after roughly 40 years at the Local Union No. 3 IBEW and years of leaving for his job in Manhattan at 2:15 a.m. each day, Artie was ready to retire.
But 11⁄2 months into retirement, Schuff’s plans changed.
After four strokes and three open-heart surgeries left him in and out of the hospitals and rehabilitation centers for nearly 7 months, the 70-year-old is trying to get back on his feet with the help of his wife, Pat, daughter, Allison McConville, and two granddaughters, Ava and Sabrina.
“He looks good, he gets very
emotional, of course he wants to come home,” said Pat, who FaceTimes her husband every night. “Some nights are not so good.”
But his support team tries to keep his spirits up.
“We really are a team of girls here,” Pat said.
Artie and Pat met in the schoolyard of PS 88 in Queens, N.Y., when they were just 13 and 12 years old, and started dating in 1969. The couple eventually married, had three children, and added seven grandchildren to the mix.
Pat’s memory for her husband is long. She remembers the day they met as clearly as she can recall the day they were separated and the laundry list of procedures and strokes and diagnoses along the way.
They met on April 7, and they were separated this past year on Sept. 13.
On that Sunday morning, they drove to the emergency room at New Milford Hospital and were told that Artie had three “very serious, very dangerous” aortic aneurysms that needed immediate attention, Pat said. He was quickly airlifted to Yale New Haven Hospital.
“Talk about a change of a life in seconds,” Pat said. “His journey has not stopped.”
Since that day, Artie has endured an aneurysm, a spinal stroke, a stroke on the right side of his brain, a stroke on the left side of his brain, a hernia, and three open-heart surgeries. The list goes on, and the medical bills are endless. But Pat and McConville have not stopped fighting to get him well again.
Even after a rehabilitation center in Bethel told the women that there was nothing they could do for Artie, he has been made significant improvements.
“They told us that this was his baseline and that he was like an egg, and all he did was lean to one side and fall, and your father will never walk again,” McConville said.
Now, at a new facility, Glen Hill Rehabilitation Center in Danbury, he’s been able to walk five steps with assistance, can slide from the bed to the wheelchair, and has been cleared to eat normal foods again, according to Pat. “He’s coming along,” she said. McConville said he’s still cognitively there, despite everything his body has been through, and will joke around with her.
The trauma of the past half year has been difficult for the women, who have spent so much time caring for him. Pat is a paraeducator for children with special needs, so she splits her time between her students and her ailing husband. It hasn’t been easy.
While the wome were grocery shopping, a song came on, and both, shopping in different aisles at the time, broke down in tears. The song reminded them of Artie.
“He’s our rock,” Pat said. “He’s the strong one, he’s the chef in the house. He better get better.”
The Schuff family has started a GoFundMe to help cover some of Artie’s medical bills, which have been eating into their savings. Friends and neighbors have pitched in to help the family, and they have raised $8,335 to date.
“It is a most beautiful thing,” Pat said. McConville was taken aback by the generosity of people who may not even know them.
“I can’t even believe all the people that have donated. It’s just amazing that people do that,” she said.
Bills aside, the women are focused on getting Artie well enough to come back home and enjoy his retirement.
“Every night I look at his side of the bed and I’m like, ‘you better get home. This is not working,’ ” Pat said. “I miss him like crazy.”