Grey's Anatomy Monologues

Opening:

“Carpe diem. How annoying is carpe diem? How are you supposed to plan a life, a career, a family, if you’re always carpe-ing the diem? If we all seized every moment, of every day, there wouldn’t be doctors. Who would sit through med school!? We’d all be too busy living in the now, whatever that means.”

Closing: 

“I’ll admit the Romans had it right. You gotta live life. Between seizing what life offers in the moment, and forging ahead, no matter what life offers, or closing the curtains, and shutting out the day.”

Opening:

“Picture this: You’ve spent the last five years of your residency training to become a surgeon. But those five years suddenly don’t matter. The only thing that matters, the only thing between you and the rest of your career is a test in a random hotel, in a random city, with a random examiner, asking you random questions. Nervous? You should be.”

Closing:

“Kindergarten. High school. College. Med school. Residency. It all leads to this moment. Some people can crack under the pressure. Others thrive. Either way, there’s nothing left to do. No more studying, no more preparing. Like it or not, the moment has arrived. The only thing left for you to do is show up.”

Opening:

“When you’re a kid, you always want things to stay the same, the same teacher, same house, same friends. Being a surgeon is no different. You get used to the same attendings, same scrub nurses, same hospital. Of course, that all changes the minute fifth year comes around and you have to find a new job.”

Closing:

“It’s one of those things that people say. ‘You can’t move on until you let go of the past.’ Letting go is the easy part. it’s the moving on that’s painful. So sometimes, we fight it, try and keep things the same. Things can’t stay the same, though. At some point, you just have to let go. Move on. Because no matter how painful it is, it’s the only way we grow.”

Opening:

“Every little kid knows the words to the song. ‘The foot bone is connected to the leg bone. The leg bone is connected to the knee bone.’ In med school, you learn it’s a little more complicated than that. But still, the song is not wrong. Everything is connected. The foot bone is connected to the leg bone. The leg bone is connected to the knee bone. And if you take one piece out, the rest…just…falls apart.”

Closing:

“The human body is made up of systems that keep it alive. There’s the one that keeps you breathing, and the one that keeps you standing. The one that makes you hungry, and that one that makes you happy. They’re all connected. Take a piece out, and everything else falls apart. And it’s only when our support systems look like they might fail us that we realize how much we depended on them all along.”

Opening:

“We have a phrase in the operating room: Don’t pet the lion. It means, no matter how nice a tumor looks, how small it is, how perfect it’s margins may be, it’s still a tumor, it’s still dangerous, and it can bite. 

Closing:

“We’ve all heard the warnings, and we’ve ignored them. We push our luck. We roll the dice. We play with fire. It’s human nature. When we’re told not to touch something, we usually do. Even if we know better. Maybe because, deep down, we’re just asking for trouble.”

Opening:

“We’re trained to be vigilant; to chase down the problem; to ask all the right questions; to find the root cause. Until we know exactly what it is, and we can confront it, it takes an extreme amount of caution, or we can overstep ourselves. We can create problems when none exist.”

Closing:

“Our intentions are always pure. We always want to do what is right, but we also have the drive to push boundaries. So we’re in danger of taking things to far. We’re told to do no harm while we’re trained to cut you open with a knife. So when we do things when we should have left well enough alone. Because its hard to admit when there’s no problem to treat, to let it alone before we make it so much worse. Because we cause terrible damage.”

Opening:

“As surgeons, we’re trained to consult with each other, to get opposing views. We even encourage patients to get second opinions. But why seek a second opinion when you know that you’re right? ‘Cause if we’re honest with ourselves, surgeons are more like cowboys. We’re more likely to go it alone.”

Closing:

“You can seek the advice of others, surround yourself with trusted advisers, but in the end, the decision is always yours, and yours alone. And when it’s time to act, and you’re all alone, with your back against the wall, the only voice that matters is the one in your head. The one telling you what you probably already knew. The one that’s almost always right.”