The Five Stages of Grief Every Medical Student Faces in Surgery Rotation

(A Humorous Emotional Survival Guide for Medical Students and Interns)

Stage 1: Denial – “I’ll Be Fine. It’s Just Surgery.”

This is the moment of innocence. The rotation schedule is out. You look at the paper, see “SURGERY” printed in all-caps, and your brain immediately enters protective mode.

You mutter, “I’ll be fine. I’ll sleep. I’ll learn so much. I’ll impress the attending.” You even Google “how to ace your surgical rotation,” drink green tea for energy, and reorganize your scrubs drawer like you’re prepping for war.

You proudly tell your friends, “I love waking up early. It’s productive.”

You’ve never been so wrong in your life.

Reality hasn’t hit yet. You haven’t met the surgical resident who eats interns for breakfast. You haven’t held retractors for 4 hours straight. You don’t know that “rounds” start at a time only bakers and owls are awake for.

In denial, your optimism shields you like an N95 mask made of fairy dust. But the OR is coming for you, and it doesn’t care about your positive attitude.

Stage 2: Anger – “Why Did I Even Choose Medicine?”

This stage usually kicks in somewhere between Day 3 and Day 7.

It begins with the alarm ringing at 4:00 a.m. You slap it off with the rage of someone who hasn’t slept since the pre-clinical years. You put on your scrubs in the dark like a zombie dressing for its own funeral.

Then you get to the hospital and realize the resident has already rounded on the patients. Your notes are useless. The consultant asks you, “What’s the differential for post-op fever?” and you say, “Um… fever?”

Your bladder screams during surgeries that last longer than your childhood. Your hands are shaking from hypoglycemia. The scrub nurse glares at you like you murdered her dog.

You curse everything: the surgery gods, the residency coordinator, the medical system, the cafeteria’s lack of edible food, even your own decision to enter this profession.

In this stage, anger is your only energy source. It powers your vitals and your ability to stand for 6 hours while holding a retractor that feels like it’s fused to your soul.

Stage 3: Bargaining – “If I Survive This Week, I’ll Never Complain About Internal Medicine Again”

The bartering begins. You plead with the universe. You negotiate with your own sanity.

“If I can get through this double mastectomy without fainting, I’ll give up caffeine. Okay, not all caffeine… maybe just the third espresso shot.”

“If this surgeon doesn’t pimp me today, I’ll memorize all of Robbins Pathology by tomorrow.”

You start romanticizing other rotations: “Pediatrics wasn’t that bad, was it? At least the kids were cute. And the parents only yelled sometimes.”

You imagine switching careers—perhaps opening a café where your only scalpels are butter knives.

The bargaining escalates with each OR. “Please let the surgeon finish early. I’ll do an extra call. I’ll be nice to the surgical intern. I’ll even write the discharge summaries!”

But the OR doesn’t deal in trades. It’s a casino where the house always wins and your only chips are your will to live.

Stage 4: Depression – “I’ll Never Feel My Feet Again”

This is the stage of despair. No more false hope. No more deals. Only suffering.

Your legs are numb. Your back is tight. You can hear your spine creaking like a haunted door when you finally sit after a 12-hour day. You've developed a close, possibly romantic relationship with your compression socks.

You eat lunch at 4 p.m. and call it brunch. The cafeteria has run out of real food, so you settle for pudding and a stale granola bar. Again.

You look into the mirror and barely recognize yourself. Your under-eye circles have their own zip code. Your skin is pale, and your hair is rebelling against dry shampoo.

You mutter to yourself, “Why am I here?” at least 20 times a day.

Every time you hear “scrub in,” you internally scream, knowing it’s going to be another marathon of standing still while being slowly broken down physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

You start dreaming in surgical terms. You call your friends “co-surgeons.” You whisper “laparotomy” in your sleep.

You’re not sure if this is depression or Stockholm Syndrome.

Stage 5: Acceptance – “This Is My Life Now”

Somewhere around week 3 or 4, you just… surrender.

You stop resisting. You wake up before your alarm because your body has given up on REM sleep. You eat breakfast in silence like a monk preparing for a ritual.

You finally master the art of tying your mask with one hand. You’ve memorized the anatomy of the gallbladder by observing 12 cholecystectomies in a row.

You know where to stand in the OR, how to avoid angering the scrub nurse, and when to nod solemnly during the consultant’s monologue about his days in med school.

You stop hoping for “short cases.” You stop checking the time. You accept that surgery has no concept of lunch breaks, personal boundaries, or weekends.

But something else happens, too.

You get a rush when the incision is made. You marvel at the beating heart, the intricate anatomy, the skill of the hands that operate. You start anticipating the moves of the attending. You hold the camera steady and feel proud when the surgeon says, “Good job.”

You realize this rotation, brutal as it is, is teaching you something that textbooks never could—resilience, precision, and an unshakable ability to function under pressure.

You still fantasize about other careers. You still miss sleep. But you’ve joined the brotherhood/sisterhood of the sleepless warriors who call themselves surgical students.

You’ve made it through the five stages. And while you’ll never feel your feet again, you will walk out stronger—physically broken, yes—but mentally sharper, wiser, and slightly more sarcastic.

Bonus Stage: Reflection – “We Were Soldiers Once… and Students”

When the rotation ends, you’ll feel the strange mix of trauma and pride, like a veteran recounting a war story. You’ll tell tales of the 8-hour Whipple, the time you held the retractor wrong and got the Glare™ from the scrub nurse, or when you assisted in your first appendectomy and didn’t pass out.

You’ll laugh at the pain, cry at the memories, and possibly develop a tick whenever you hear the word “bovie.”

But most importantly, you’ll have earned the right to say: “I survived surgery rotation.”