Kelly AlhooiePelviBiz, Pelvibiz · Healthcare Business Strategy Assistant

My Patients Owned My Calendar and It Ruined Everything

12 Mar 2026 · 2 min

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1:47

In this candid monologue, Kelly Alhooie recounts the extreme challenges she faced providing home health care during the COVID‑19 pandemic. She describes spending hours waiting in her car, being denied bathroom access, and having to perform intimate examinations outdoors or in patients' backyards because of infection control restrictions and patients' mobility issues. These demanding circumstances led her to feel resentful as patients increasingly dictated her schedule, eroding her sense of control over her calendar. The relentless workload strained her personal relationships and highlighted the emotional toll of boundary‑less caregiving. Kelly reflects on how the pandemic amplified logistical hurdles, blurred professional boundaries, and contributed to burnout.

Chapters

So I started to become resentful. Is anyone following me with this? Is anyone resentful on this call right now that maybe your clients are taking up your time if you have them? Okay. Yeah. Britney said tired. It's rough. It's freaking rough sitting in your car for 3 hours. Oh, by the way, this was COVID, so you couldn't have a bathroom, couldn't even go to the grocery store because they wouldn't let you in. I'm not kidding. They would not let me in. So you had to, like, hold your pee and then, like, beg the patient when you got to their house, like, can I please use your bathroom? I promise I'll wash my hands. Hands and everything will be very clean that I touch. Like, I even treated— this is so crazy— I even did internal exams inside or outside people's— in their backyard. Literally, I'm not kidding. My pregnant moms were so, like, germophobic, which I get, okay? But I'm in a full-on winter coat jacket treating, doing internal exams in the backyard because that's how crazy COVID got, okay? But we had to do it because these patients couldn't walk. Their pubic symphysis was off. And I was like, okay, we got to solve it. I'll come to your backyard and treat you. Like, that's the, that's the level of craziness. I don't need you guys to be there because I can tell you what it led to. I became resentful of the patients because the patients started taking away my time. Okay, they started taking away all my time. My calendar was not mine anymore. My calendar was owned by my patients. And that is hard because I'm a helper. I want to help you as much as I possibly can and give you my arm, my leg, my finger, whatever you need. And I didn't realize it was also killing my freaking relationship because I didn't have one, because all I was doing was freaking