Bones

Endocrinology is such a mixed, random bag of topics: ob/gyn, bones, diabetes, pituitary, thyroid.  (Which makes sense, since ‘Endocrine’ really just means ‘things secreting things that go places and do stuff“.  So this is not a system like cardiovascular is a system.  This is the “lost and found” box of physiology.)

It’s easy to motivate myself to learn about the obviously cool things – like birth control – or obviously important things, like menopause or diabetes.

It’s also easy to motivate myself to learn about the terrifyingly complicated things, like cancers.

But I have never been able to motivate myself to learn about bones.  It’s the worst thing ever:  Show me a picture of Haversian canals and – oh god, I need a Red Bull now.  That phrase is just awful.

The closest I’ve ever come to successfully learning about bone biology is knowing that osteoclasts absorb bone – because while in class, I’m supposed to be absorbing the bone information – but osteoblasts do the opposite, because blast, I never absorb anything.  (Osteocytes are grown-up osteoblasts.  Because since I never absorbed anything, when I grow up I will cite all bone information directly from a textbook.)

Luckily, since this is the 3rd time this year we’re learning about bones, now I can at least remember the names of those cells without that ridiculous mnemonic.  Progress!

But despite that, you could still say I have an intense Haversian to this material.

*crickets*

(… I’ll be here all week, folks!  Tip your waiters!)