There was a point today during the Cadaver Closing Ceremony, while one student from each small group came up on stage to light a candle in memory of the person who let us know them in a way nobody else ever could, that I was struck down by the sheer obsurdity of where I was. This has been happening to me about once or twice a month now, for the past two or maybe even three years. But now for some reason I guess I should write about it.

There's an exciting time around finals season, when all the information from the preceeding section comes together to finally make some sort of sense. For the neuro final last month, for example, there was a good week during which I could imagine each neuronal pathway involved with every action or perception I had until I was blue in the face and dizzy with mental imagery. When you're stopped at a traffic light, which layers of cornea, lens, and retina must the green light pass before influencing a form of Retinoic Acid to undergo a confirmational change that allows it to bind a molecule that changes the internal voltage of that cone cell to send a signal downstream to another neuron that sends another signal to another neuron that extends an arm behind your eyeball, through your optic nerve, to bounce a signal to another neuron on your Lateral Geniculate Nucleus in your Thalmus that then relays another signal to the back of your brain, where the signal is mapped, deciphered, and sent elsewhere to begin the process of recognition that eventually gets interpreted to mean "GO YOU IDIOT!" before getting relayed to the motor cortex where the act of pushing a gas pedal is imagined, then initiated, then checked and double checked by the cerebellum as you get the car moving while your entire sympathetic nervous system is shocked into action by the sudden honking of angry cars behind you.
Whew.
So just when I thought I could stop thinking so much, the process starts all over again double-time in preparation for the cumulative exam. It's kinda neat, I have to admit, but sometimes I just need to shut the hell up about it. I already told Dan he had a tumor when he broke his femur, and lord knows what else I might accidentally bring into people's minds over the next few weeks.

But the cadaver ceremony really marked the end of one of the craziest years I've ever had (so far). The cadavers themselves were particularly symbolic, as our is now in so many pieces that I was looking at a piece of it yesterday for almost a minute before I realized it was a human tongue cut in half down the middle (which I only figured out when I traced it down to a quarter jaw with a few silver molar fillings). Now that they're all in bits, it's up to us to fit them back together in our heads. Kinda like breaking the glass at the end of a Jewish wedding. Except we cremate the glass and give them back to their families with an implicit "thank you for letting us borrow your loved one."

But I'll never again have that moment of first incision into a dead woman's back, or the chance to utterly destroy a human being's face with a hammer, chizel, and hacksaw and get away with it. At least if I do, something will be missing. The flinch is gone. It doesn't bother me anymore. The fact that I come home to eat dinner still smelling like dead people just isn't nearly as bothersome as the hunger you come to build after looking at so much meat. So it goes. I've become a psychopath. All for only $42,000 and a bitch of an application.