Polk State professor publishes candid book of surgery stories, drawing from a lifetime of service and lessons for the classroom

Dr. Anthony Rizzo, a retired Air Force colonel, decorated surgeon and longtime Polk State College anatomy and physiology professor, recently released Cheeseburger Pneumonia… and Other Surgery Stories, a collection that blends raw tales from the operating room with hard-won insights from his medical training.

The book arrives at a moment when Rizzo’s decades of real-world experience continue to shape how he prepares the next generation of healthcare professionals.

Rizzo’s career reads like a script for a medical thriller. After earning his degree, he served nearly 40 years in the Air Force, where he performed emergency surgeries as chief of hospital services at Lajes Air Force Base in the Azores, the U.S. Air Force Academy and other locations. His latest book is divided into chapters of his life: Medical School, Residency, Chief Residency, Active Duty and Teaching Attending.

“This book started as stories I told my students over the years,” Rizzo explained. “The early chapters about my own medical school days – terrible professors, endless lectures with zero practical connection and learning by trial and error in the hospitals. Back then, we had to figure it out ourselves.”

The ‘because’

Those formative frustrations fuel his teaching style that stands in stark contrast to what he endured. Every day in his Anatomy and Physiology classes, Rizzo refuses to let students memorize in a vacuum.

“I tell my students to learn the because,” he emphasized.

He elaborated that one day, students will be the nurses explaining difficult lab results to a patient or family. They will be ultrasound techs who spot anomalies that save lives, or radiologists who report changes to a treatment plan.

“We are not teaching technicians,” he added. “We are teaching professionals.”

That philosophy presents itself in the stories Rizzo weaves into every class, which make complex physiology unforgettable.

While Rizzo gets most excited about “Crushed Upper Extremity” detailing the reconstruction of a U.S. Navy sailor’s arm crushed by a nuclear submarine’s trash compactor, students seem to engage most with “Mystery Injury” – a fractured corpus cavernosum (Googling this may not be safe for work).

“The crushed extremity is my personal favorite because it is a story packed with so much anatomy, physiology and real-time decision-making that it becomes an entire interactive lesson itself,” Rizzo said.

Labor of love

Students aren’t the only ones taking notice.

College leadership has asked Rizzo to train and mentor other faculty members to help meet a surging enrollment demand in health sciences and nursing programs. He will spend his summer “vacation” developing the training and mentoring colleagues.

“This is a labor of love,” he said. “I am truly honored that they approached me with this opportunity and I take it very seriously.”

He is an advocate for the quality of instruction students receive at Polk State.

Rizzo’s “Wall of Fame,” although currently packed up as the Winter Haven Science Building undergoes renovations, provides students with a powerful visual.

“It shows them that they can start at Polk and become a doctor,” he said. “I want them to see that and know, ‘I can start here, and get there.’”

The wall, his book and the classroom are all sides of the same mission.

Cheeseburger Pneumonia… and Other Surgery Stories captures the humor, chaos, life-and-death stakes and quiet triumphs of medicine.

These are the elements that Rizzo brings to the classroom, lab and his students, many who will one day hold patients’ futures in their hands.