A Grapes of Exchange –

A Romantic Story with a Twist of Anatomical Fate

The Grapes of Exchange is a story of romance, unspoken promises, wrath, passion and a ditched lover that happens with a single inspiration. In the end, a mission is accomplished for the good of all.

From the minute I saw him I loved him and I knew that no matter what evolved, we would spend our lives together… little did I know what the working relationship would be.

Here follows a true story about me, the bronchiole, and my lifelong buddy the pulmonary arteriole.

He and I were on a mission. I had my origins in the atmosphere and he from the heart. We came from very different backgrounds and had come a long way on this trip on the highways and byways of the airways and circulation. My mission was to take products from the air in the atmosphere and deliver them to the grapes of exchange and his was to deliver blue blood to the same grapes. In this communication we will speak mostly of the journey to the grapes in the house of the pulmonary lobule. The grapes of exchange in my imagination had something to do with bonding and marriage – perhaps the exchange of vows. The story turns out quite differently. We had great travels together and took a lot of pictures!!

I think by this time you know what we had already been through. He had started out as a large elastic vessel off the right heart called the main pulmonary artery (nickname “MPA”) and I had started out as the trachea. (nickname “trach”). We met at the doorway of the lung called the hilum, and took a fancy to each other right away and so we decided to travel together. We had traveled a long way by the time our story begins both experiencing many divisions and were right in the middle of an inspiration. We both looked quite different at this point having given birth to many offspring. In the new language – we had both “morphed” quite a bit but this was a necessary part of the mission. Of course we were much smaller than we had been. He had lost some of his elasticity and developed a bit of muscle. I had lost my entire cartilaginous skeleton and had developed some muscle as well. We were told that from now on we were both going to lose muscle and I in particular was going to change drastically. I could not wait! I secretly hoped that this change would make me more attractive and bring me closer to a happy union since I was promised a happy union in the end. My name at this stage was “terminal bronchiole”. A foreboding and deathly chill rattled down my muscularis as I said the word “terminal” knowing that I was going to lose the small amount of muscle that I had.

We reached the doorway surrounding the secondary lobule and faced the polyhedral entrance. It was quite beautiful I thought in my teal blue outfit.