Dorothy

Part of my job is to work with people who have swallowing problems.  It's great in a nursing facility because I can usually get a couple of my patients in the therapy room at lunch and have them eat in there with me, so I'm not running around for an entire hour and can actually do effective therapy.  Well one day, I had 2 patients for swallowing therapy at lunch and my OT had 2 other patients in the therapy room to help them with self-feeding.  All of them were women--thank goodness.  You'll understand later in the story why I'm grateful a man wasn't in there!  A funny little lady named Dorothy was in the room working with my OT--Dorothy had Alzheimer's.  She had a sweet doll-like face to go along with her 200+ lb frame.  But part of Alzheimers in the later stages is that the person isn't able to use facial expressions---they have what we call 'flat affect.' Dorothy never smiled. So here I was feeding one of my patients (I was sitting across the room from Dorothy) and I accidentally dropped gravy on my pants--right below my zipper on the leg of my khaki pants.  I went and got a wet paper towel and starting scrubbing my pants trying to get the gravy off.  Meanwhile, my OT was asking Dorothy a question about her meal--but Dorothy did not respond.  She was a little preoccupied watching me clean my pants.  Actually, staring is more like it. Dorothy finally held up her hand to my OT and said, "I'm sorry--I don't know what you said.  I can't think of anything else because I'm watching this masturbation."  I immediately looked up in shock!  And I tried not to crack up--actually we just ignored her because we honestly did not know what to say.  After I got the gravy off, I had this big wet spot on my pants.  So I grabbed the box fan sitting on the floor next to me and turned it toward me so my pants would dry.  Dorothy looked at the fan and then looked back at me and said frankly, "That's right girl.  You heated it up, now you gotta cool it down."  And that's when I cracked up.