The most difficult challenge in dealing with my MIL is the fact that this disease strikes so young. You look at her and physically she looks like every other 70 year old. So to those who encounter her they think she is an older woman who is physically still capable and nothing is wrong with her.
Off and on, my MIL will tell us that she needs to get back to Sugar Land to check on her house. (She hasn't owned her home in three years.) She told my husband that she had called the bus station and they had a bus that goes to Sugarland. She will do this over and over. We are afraid that she will call the taxi company to come get her---which she has tried.
When she lived in the retirement home, she convinced other residents who had a car that she needed to go to Sugarland to check on her house and would pay them for their gas if they would take her. After a while the residents realized that something wasn't right but at first they thought she had all her wits about her.
It is another coping mechanism---she doesn't want anyone to know that there is something wrong with her and feels if she can isolate herself or return to a place where she is "safe" that no one will know she is declining.
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