Discussing My Voyage - Assignment Example

? Module This guy swallowed me whole; thanks God I didn’t get stuck around his teeth! They looked huge from this micro-submarine I have been riding. They were like huge pillars grinding everything that came between them, but now I was going down the oesophagus. The windows were getting really dirty and these wipers were not doing well in this semi-solid environment. I did however see the peristaltic movements that pushed me with the food into the stomach. I dropped with a splash into the semi-filled stomach. Luckily my submarine was resistant to all this acid around me. The walls were all churning and squeezing everything inside. The semi-solid food was being turned into a paste here. We stayed for quite some time there, but I was hardly steady to make sense of the surroundings. After some time, we passed through this narrow exit that had opened transiently. This must have been the pylorus. There was mostly liquid around me when we entered the duodenum. The environment here was rather calm. It was more of a hollow tube with a texture much like a towel. Our movement was also rather quick here. I soon saw an opening, a slimy green liquid was dripping and mixing into the water around me. It was the bile, made the windows all sticky and blinded me for much of my time in the duodenum. By the time the screen was cleared we had moved into the jejunum. It was very monotonous around here. The submarine moved slowly with the peristaltic movements, the villi looked huge, more like a cave with all these projections. Slowly we drifted into the ileum, the walls looked paler now. I had to move into the circulation now, it was the time. I didn’t want to get stuck in the colon, so I gently maneuvered and then attached the submarine to a villus. From close inspection it did have pores so I used one of them to cross into the mucosal membrane and from there into a capillary. Actually I just avoided the slimy fat particles and followed the more watery substances straight into a capillary. Here I just followed the blood, the capillaries joined to form veins which became larger and larger and soon I was in a large vein. It was the superior mesenteric vein and soon it joined with the splenic vein to form the portal vein. And then the sub moved into the Liver. The veins again started to get smaller and smaller. Soon hepatocytes were visible, the veins were moved out, rather radiated out with hepatocytes all arranged in lines around each. They were taking up blood and filtering it. These channels then drained into systemic venous channels. The blood was a lot cleaner here. These then united into bigger and bigger channels and eventually drained into the Inferior Vena Cava. I could feel the heart beating here, the sound of the heart beating was also getting louder and louder. The blood was flowing faster here and soon we moved up into the right atrium. And then a slight push and we were in the Ventricle. It all happened pretty fast and soon a gush of blood was pushed into the pulmonary veins and with a snap, I was trying to control my submarine into the pulmonary arteries. The vasculature once again narrowed down and soon we went close the alveoli, they looked rather dark from the distance, and capillaries were rather cup shaped. The blood here turned bright red in colour, and then these capillaries united yet again and the formed into the thin loose walls of the veins. These then took us to the left atrium. The pressure here was rather high and the sound of the heart was also louder, it contracted and we were into a sea of blood. It was the largest blood filled cavity I had seen so far and then suddenly the left ventricle snapped against the submarine pushing it into the aorta. The sub had gained significant velocity and within seconds we crossed numerous openings in the aorta into the abdominal aorta. I grabbed my wheel tightly here, I had to move into the left renal artery. It was at right angle to the abdominal aorta. And came rather quickly, I saw two openings in the aorta opposite to each other, I knew instantly that they were renal arteries. I steered into the left one. I took me into the afferent arterioles, and then the glomerulus. Here I attached my sub to the wall. I could see small openings from where the ultra-filtrate was moving into the Bowman’s capsule and tried to move through one. But the podocytes, wouldn’t let me through. Seems like my submarine had gotten some charge on its surface during all this movement. I took some time and neutralised my submarine. It then easily slipped through the podocytes into the Bowman’s capsule (Snell & Snell, 2008). . It was all serum-like ultra-filtrate around me now, clear as a crystal and I could easily make out things. It was slowly flowing downwards. I followed it into the proximal convoluted tubule, it was convoluted indeed; zig zag all the way! Then we went down into the loop of Henle, it became more and more concentrated as we went down. And then just like that we started to ascend. The fluid became a bit less concentrated and the next thing, we were back into zig zag. I must say I felt nauseated with all that movement. Well then onwards the fluid took more and more colour and appearance of urine and the next thing I knew, we were moving through the ureter. It was very narrow I must say, and it was the narrowest when it entered into the bladder. The bladder was rather calm, smooth walls, filled with urine. Not much pushing or churning. I stayed there for some time and then suddenly a whirlpool developed at the bottom, and down the drain we went, straight through the urethra into the urine container. Thank God the guy had held it right, never wanted to end up in the urinal! The trip was rather entertaining, watching food get crushed and then broken down into little bits, then getting digested and getting absorbed in the intestine. The liver with all its wisdom, cleaning all the blood before it enters the mainstream. Then the lungs further purifying it with oxygen, the heart with all its might pushing blood into all of the body and the kidneys quietly purifying eat. The body is really built for the task, everything gelled together with perfection and all the organs at just the right place, enlightening experience I must say! References Top of Form Snell, R. S., & Snell, R. S. (2008). Clinical anatomy by regions. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Read More