My First Christmas Not on Call | Life After Leaving Medicine

In this holiday episode of Surgeon, Interrupted, Frances Mei is joined by her husband, Colin, for a candid, unfiltered conversation about what life actually looks like after leaving clinical medicine.

It’s Frances Mei's first holiday season in nearly a decade not on call, and the absence of the hospital brings both relief and reckoning.

Together, they talk about:

1. The strange quiet of the first holiday season outside medicine
2. How residency and surgical training shape work habits long after you leave
3. “Revenge sleeping,” productivity guilt, and unlearning survival mode
4. Why leaving medicine doesn’t magically create balance
5. Treating the nervous system as an asset—not an afterthought
6. What partners see when physicians finally slow down
7. Why intentional rest is harder than relentless work

This episode isn’t about having it all figured out. It’s about the in-between: learning how to live without call schedules, rediscovering time, and building a life that doesn’t revolve around crisis.

For anyone spending the holidays at the hospital—or spending their first holidays away from it—this conversation is for you.

Host: Frances Mei Hardin, MD

Guest: Colin Royal

Presented by: The Hippocratic Collective

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