We flew out of Santa Barbara on Saturday. Our flight was delayed due to weather in Dallas, but it worked out well for us, as I guess some folks changed flights and we ended up with an empty seat in our row. Scooby was happy to have his own seat space, instead of having to squeeze under the seat in front of me. There was a nasty bit of turbulence on the flight, so I was super glad to have Ed with me, as I don’t do well with turbulence!
We got to DFW and picked up our rental car, a Buick Encore, it is a nice SUV. We checked into the Drury Plaza Hotel at Cityline, my usual Dallas haunt.
While in Dallas, I had some medical things to take care of. We also took Scooby to the vet, as he has been having some urinary incontinence and has been a bit clingy/whiny which is unusual for him. I was certain he had a urinary tract infection from what I had read up on. Well, his urine test showed some crystals in his urine, but no infection and his bladder scan was normal. This is when the visit took an unexpected turn. The vet had us fill out a questionnaire and broke the news to us that Scooby is suffering from moderate dementia. I was completely shocked and emotional at this news! She put him on a special diet and prescribed him anxiety pills. She stated that similar to humans, dementia is not treatable, we can only treat the symptoms. She assured me that this will not reduce his lifespan, per se, but there is no way to know how quickly the dementia may progress, if at all.
We originally were scheduled to return to California on the 13th, however, the repair shop has indicated that the repairs are going to take 2 weeks longer than expected. I was able to get a surgery I needed scheduled for the 27th, so we decided to go ahead and cancel our flight. We decided that we would drive back to California after the surgery.
We stayed in Dallas until the 15th doing errands, medical appointments and some financial stuff. I spent lots of time with Mama and Ed spent time doing “Ed” things.
Then we decided to go to Hot Springs as a side trip prior to my surgery.