The good thing about deciding, at age 51, that you want to be an RN, and have:
- no background in the medical field
- no family members in the medical field, and
- just a few friends in the medical field
–the great thing about all of the above is that you HAVE NO IDEA what you’re getting yourself into.
It’s excellent news if, after working as a CNA and taking Anatomy 101, you discover that you love it. It’s bad news if your post-menopausal brain functions like a sieve, holding only big chunks of info and sifting all the small bits down the drain. Especially if you don’t have a strong background in the sciences–again, NO IDEA what you’re getting yourself into.
Fortunately one of the benefits of being older is the wisdom part: you know that one of the best ways to learn is to teach. So I’m here to teach you what I’ve learned about the body—our fascinating, complex, sometimes disgusting, always magnificent, body. Hopefully it will impart some appreciation for the magic happening inside you every day (magical science). It’s also what’s happening inside most of our furry friends—we are all mammals after all, and not so different from one another.
Presenting information about how our bodies function in a logical way is not easy; with so many moving parts, and all of them dependent on one another, there are many approaches one could take—maybe it would be best to start with the exterior—the skin, and work in, to the gut? Or it might be better to start with the organ systems and then tie them all together. What’s difficult about any sequential approach to anatomy and physiology is that you are guaranteed to end up with random sections that will ultimately be shoved in at the end, or wherever, because the body doesn’t function like an assembly line. It’s more like several thousand assembly lines, of varying lengths and dependencies, working simultaneously.
Beginning with the heart seems to make sense–it’s the heart of the matter! It’s what I’ll be covering next. If there are areas of the body you’re curious about, let me know. I’ll happily do my best to cover them in the future.