There are a lot of sacrifices involved in being a surgeon, and as you both suggested, even more in surgical training.
In the past, I've referenced the example of a racecar driver. They just lOVE to drive fast....who knows why? There is some strange, probably pathologic connection in their brain to that activity, and they would rather do that than just about anything else. For a lot of surgeons that's what it feels like to operate. My husband can tell within 30 seconds of my arrival at home whether or not I've done a lot of surgery that day - he says I'm in a great mood when I've been operating and depressed if I haven't been.
Unlike your classmates, I never thought I wanted to do surgery, and just for the reasons you list. Who wants to work around a bunch of jerks all day, never sleep, and never go home? Plus, I thought I was just too cerebral - surgeons were really just the glorified plumbers of the medical world, in my opinion.
That all changed in about 30 seconds on my first day of surgery clerkship. On my very first case, a bowel resection for cancer, the surgeon handed me the scalpel and said, "you're going to open." Long and short of it: it was the most amazing, fabulous, FUN thing I'd ever done in my life. I had a profound epiphany when I placed my hands into the abdomen and realized, 'my hands are INSIDE THIS PERSON'S BODY!!" To my surprise, I just loved to operate.
Then, as the weeks went by, I found that surgeons held a very wide medical knowledge base. It's different where ever you go, but at my current institution we have an 'open ICU', which means that everyone manages their own patients. There is no intensivist running the show down there - if you operate on someone, you take care of them. So, every problem that the subspecialists and generalists see: heart failure, complex ventilator managment, sepsis, renal failure, hepatic dysfunction, diabetes....you name it....are managed in our post operative patients - by the surgeons.
To offer a bit of concrete evidence for of our wide understanding of medicine, our surgery residents have higher USMLE part 3 score averages than the Internal Medicine, Family Practice, or Pediatirics residents, even thought there is barely any surgery on the test.
Surgery is a hard lifestyle, although with the new mandates and focus on residents rights, hopefully the training part will be progressively less malignant. If you love being in the operating room, then it becomes worth it. If you don't have that funky thrill in the pit of your stomach when you find out there's a case going to the OR with your name on it....then the sacrifices are too great, and you'll likely be miserable.
Cheers!
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