Respiratory Study Guide
Fill out this narrative with terms from chapter 11. You should be able to do most of this from your knowledge of A&P.
I AM OTTO, THE OXYGEN ATOM. Here I am, minding my own business in the atmosphere, hanging with my nitrogen pals, and I get sucked into some guy’s nostril (1.______), into his (2.______) cavity. I got a pretty good look around, too, into his (3.______), which just seemed like a lot of empty space (but awfully resonant), and also at these funny hair-like things (4.______) that swept particles of dust toward the dude’s posterior.
Well, dude kept inhaling, so soon I followed the dust particles into the (5.______) right behind the nasal cavity, and kept on going through (6.______), where I could see his teeth, and into the (7.______) just below that. Then he swallowed some mucus (that was gross), and I bounced off the covering (8.______) for his wind pipe (9.______). Of course he kept sucking wind, and I went right through that trachea, into the (10.______), then into the narrower (11.______) and into the narrower yet (12.______). By the way, that whole process was (13.______). Otto the oxygen atom is mad about all this; so mad, he accidently spoke in the third person just now.
Finally I found myself in this sac (14.______) with a bunch of capillaries attached to it. From there, I ended up in a red blood cell with a couple other oxygen atoms, like it was some sort of molecular paddy wagon! Wholly cough-ola, my journey was far from over. Now this red blood cell – terrible driver – is bouncing down the pulmonary artery, and through the heart, and down who-knows-how-many tubes. Along the way, I could see other red blood cells, but they weren’t carrying a lot of other oxygen (a condition called (15.______)). Then, I got unceremoniously dumped (dumped!) into a striated muscle; there wasn’t a lot of oxygen here, either (a condition called (16______)); that silly cell used me (used, I tell you!) to help it create ATP, and I end up glommed onto this Carbon guy. What. A. Jerk.
It doesn’t even end there! Me and carbo-puff get sent back to another erythrocyte, which picks us up and collides its way all the way back through all those tubes. Clearly, the dude I was inside of was having some problems; a whole bunch of other red blood cells were carrying all the carbon-jerks and their poor oxygen counterparts (let’s just call that CO2) through the bloodstream (lots of CO2 is a condition called (17.______)). And then we all get thrown (thrown, for AJ’s sake!) back through the alveoli and the rest of the lung. This whole process on the inside of the dude is called (18.______).
So dude is really having trouble, and his (19.______) muscle contracts sharply to force air out of his lungs quickly (20.______). I get thrown right into this mass of spit and mucus (21.______) with carbon-hole, who’s just loving this, and then another cough sends us flying out the dude’s mouth. We end up right next to some bloody stuff that also came out of the dude’s lungs (a symptom called (22.______)).