General surgery - You really have to be obsessed with the GI tract, because today's general surgeons deal with abdominal pathology. You have to love fecal matter and daydream about stapling colon day in and day out, irrigating the rectum, and embrace working 30 hours at a time after your painful intern year.
ENT - Tubes and tonsils are mostly what you see. Hours aren't as bad as gen surg but there's a ton of neck dissections that last a good while, and reconstructive cases can last into the wee hours. As with general surgery, there will be surgical oncology cases that don't result in cures despite that 18 hour surgery.
Ortho - The worst part is getting blasted on trauma call, and 2nd year is even worse than intern year, according to a 3rd year resident. Hand surgery and sports medicine yields a great lifestyle, though.
Neurosurgery - people are probably used to not seeing you anymore so it shouldn't be a big change. I'd call this the specialty with the worst lifestyle, and you never know when your patient's brain might hemorrhage halfway through a perfect textbook surgery. Choose this if you like operating on a pulsating brain through a microscope for hours at a time, with no room for error.
I've never met a general surgery resident who wanted to stay in general surgery. All the ones I've worked with wanted to become endocrine or breast surgeons, as they'd have much better hours.
Surgery is the medicine and procedures on a patient, which can really dominate your life. The upside is that your patients are generally healthier than the internal medicine patients, since they're healthy enough to undergo surgery in the first place.
Choose your specialty based on what you love to read about, and how much you want to devote to your patients.
Remember that your experience as a med student on the surgery rotation is pretty light compared to what the residents go through, so think deeply and for a long amount of time before you take the plunge.
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