Aorta Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Aorta. Here they are! All 57 of them:

Water is to India as blood is to the body, with the many rivers functioning as arteries – the Ganges being the aorta – and the monsoon timelessly arriving as a much-needed annual blood transfusion.
Colin Phelan (The Local School)
a great doctor must have a huge heart and a distended aorta through which pumps a vast lake of compassion and human kindness.
Adam Kay (This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor)
They must have something that cannot be memorized and graded: a great doctor must have a huge heart and a distended aorta through which pumps a vast lake of compassion and human kindness.
Adam Kay (This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor)
I knew—but I did know that I had crossed 700  The border. Everything I loved was lost But no aorta could report regret. A sun of rubber was convulsed and set; And blood-black nothingness began to spin A system of cells interlinked within Cells interlinked within cells interlinked Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct Against the dark, a tall white fountain played. I
Vladimir Nabokov (Pale Fire)
I can't tell you how I knew - but I did know that I had crossed The border. Everything I loved was lost But no aorta could report regret. A sun of rubber was convulsed and set; And blood-black nothingness began to spin A system of cells interlinked within Cells interlinked within cells interlinked Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.
Vladimir Nabokov (Pale Fire)
Sometimes I forget for one second and it hurts. It’s a different kind of pain than the constant, the weight that hangs from my heart. It swings from twine embedded so deeply that my aorta has grown around it. Blood pulses past rope in the chambers of my heart, dragging away tiny fibers until my whole body is suffused and pain is all I am and ever can be.
Mindy McGinnis (The Female of the Species)
Hate Poem I hate you truly. Truly I do. Everything about me hates everything about you. The flick of my wrist hates you. The way I hold my pencil hates you. The sound made by my tiniest bones were they trapped in the jaws of a moray eel hates you. Each corpuscle singing in its capillary hates you. Look out! Fore! I hate you. The blue-green jewel of sock lint I’m digging from under by third toenail, left foot, hates you. The history of this keychain hates you. My sigh in the background as you explain relational databases hates you. The goldfish of my genius hates you. My aorta hates you. Also my ancestors. A closed window is both a closed window and an obvious symbol of how I hate you. My voice curt as a hairshirt: hate. My hesitation when you invite me for a drive: hate. My pleasant “good morning”: hate. You know how when I’m sleepy I nuzzle my head under your arm? Hate. The whites of my target-eyes articulate hate. My wit practices it. My breasts relaxing in their holster from morning to night hate you. Layers of hate, a parfait. Hours after our latest row, brandishing the sharp glee of hate, I dissect you cell by cell, so that I might hate each one individually and at leisure. My lungs, duplicitous twins, expand with the utter validity of my hate, which can never have enough of you, Breathlessly, like two idealists in a broken submarine.
Julie Sheehan
Doctors must be psychologically fit for the job — able to make decisions under a terrifying amount of pressure, able to break bad news to us anguished relatives, able to deal with death on a daily basis. They must have something that cannot be memorized and graded; a great doctor must have a huge heart and a distended aorta which pumps a vast lake of compassion and human kindness.
Adam Kay (This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor)
Old Man River! That seems far too austere a name For something made of mirth and rage. O, roiling red-blood river vein, If chief among your traits is age, You're a wily, convoluted sage. Is "old" the thing to call what rings The vernal heart of wester-lore; What brings us brassy-myth made kings (And preponderance of bug-type things) To challenge titans come before? Demiurge to a try at Avalon-once-more! And what august vitality In your wide aorta stream You must have had to oversee Alchemic change of timber beam To iron, brick and engine steam. Your umber whiskey waters lance The prideful sober sovereignty Of faulty-haloed Temperance And wilt her self-sure countenance; Yes, righteousness is vanity, But your sport's for imps, not elderly. If there's a name for migrant mass Of veteran frivolity That snakes through seas of prairie grass And groves of summer sassafras, A name that flows as roguishly As gypsy waters, fast and free, It's your real name, Mississippi.
Tracy J. Butler (Lackadaisy: Volume #1 (Lackadaisy, #1))
My custom has always been to ponder grief; that is, to follow it through ventricle and aorta to find its lurking places.
Marilynne Robinson
But I guess maybe Mom and Dad are smart enough to realize that pointing out the second hand on the clock isn't going to suddenly mend the fissure straight through my aorta. Here's the thing, though- they were right. We're deep into winter and I've stopped feeling like there is a spear in my chest every time he's up against Branlet in the hallway.
Mindy McGinnis (The Female of the Species)
the professor had refused surgery for the rupturing aorta that was wiping his personal equation off the blackboard of life. “It is tasteless to prolong life artificially,” Einstein had told his physicians.
Tom Robbins (Jitterbug Perfume)
Billy was walking up the hall, buckling his belt. His tanned face was now sallow and wet with sweat. "He says there's a bulge in my aorta. Like a bubble in a car tire. Only car tires don't yell when you poke em.
Stephen King (Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2))
Una spinta muove il polmone e alla fine Lo abbandona. Ma tu chi sei? Sei il polmone o sei la forza Che lo gonfia e lo svuota? Chi sei tu? Sei il tuo cuore, sei l’intreccio delle Fibre, la vena cava, il sangue, sei l’arteria, l’aorta sei? O sei la forza che tutto questo muove? O sei la forza? O sei la forza che
Mariangela Gualtieri (Caino: il buio era me stesso)
HIM: I should have known better than to fall for a scientist. Your idea of a Valentine’s heart probably has an aorta. HER: Is it a crime to be biologically relevant? She
Jodi Picoult (Leaving Time)
I wanted to marry wood. I wanted to chew down some two–by–fours, crawl inside a tree, slide elm into my aorta so that every beat of every second was a grand waltz with luck.
Aimee Bender (An Invisible Sign of My Own)
Your idea of a Valentine’s heart probably has an aorta.
Jodi Picoult (Leaving Time)
(given a choice between listening to Britney Spears and having a blocked aorta, I’d pick the latter),
Etgar Keret (The Seven Good Years)
I looked briefly up from my notes. I was surrounded by hearts, sectioned and preserved. Hearts with holes. Hearts with leaking valves or thickened walls. Hearts with narrow or transposed aortas. I closed my eyes.
Claire Holden Rothman (The Heart Specialist)
Sometimes I forget for one second and it hurts. It’s a different kind of pain than the constant, the weight that hangs from my heart. It swings from twine embedded so deeply that my aorta has grown around it. Blood pulses past rope in the chambers of my heart, dragging away tiny fibers until my whole body is suffused and pain is all I am and ever can be. But sometimes it swings just right and there's a moment of suspension when I can't feel it. The rope goes slack and the laws of physics give me one second of relief. I can laugh and smile and feel something else. But, those same laws undo me. And, when it swings back, there's a sharp tug on my heart to remind me that I forgot.
Mindy McGinnis (The Female of the Species)
Imagine a forty-five-year-old male fifty feet long, a slim, shiny black animal cutting the surface of green ocean water at twenty knots. At fifty tons it is the largest carnivore on earth. Imagine a four-hundred-pound heart the size of a chest of drawers driving five gallons of blood at a stroke through its aorta; a meal of forty salmon moving slowly down twelve-hundred feet of intestine…the sperm whale’s brain is larger than the brain of any other creature that ever lived…With skin as sensitive as the inside of your wrist.
Barry Lopez (Crossing Open Ground)
A torn aorta is almost always fatal He sets his stop watch; if his aorta is torn he only has a short time to live. Five minutes tick by, and he’s still alive. He shifts his attention to his leg which is painful and tingling and begins to check his lower body for injuries. Something about his leg looks weird. It takes him a few seconds to figure out what he’s looking at. Somehow he is sitting on his own leg, impossible even for a circus contortionist. The thigh bone, or femur, is the strongest bone in the body, and it takes a tremendous amount of force to break it. The PJ finally figures out his femur is snapped in half, and his leg is folded back underneath him.
William F. Sine (Guardian Angel: Life and Death Adventures with Pararescue, the World's Most Powerful Commando Rescue Force)
Surgeons don’t cut you open for fun. They would probably rather be playing rugby or getting very drunk and accusing each other of being gay. That is what they like doing best. They will only cut you open if they really have to. If you decide you don’t want to be operated on, they will be only too happy to have one less patient on their ever-growing waiting lists. Very few surgeons are good at the touchy-feely sensitive stuff, but then us touchy-feely GPs would be rubbish at fixing a broken pelvis or repairing a burst aorta. You should see the mess I make trying to carve a roast chicken! We each have our skills and if it were me that was in need of an operation, I would happily put up with a slightly insensitive posh rugby boy if I knew that he was a good surgeon and could put me back together again.
Benjamin Daniels (Confessions of a Gp: A Matter Life, Death and Earwax)
transparent model of the aorta filled with water to observe the swirls and flow. The experiments showed that the valve required “a fluid dynamic control mechanism which positions the cusps away from the wall of the aorta, so that the slightest reversed flow will close the valve.” That mechanism, they realized, was the vortex or swirling flow of blood that Leonardo had discovered in the aorta root. “The vortices produce a thrust on both the cusp and the sinus wall, and the closure of the cusps is thus steady and synchronized,” they wrote. “Leonardo da Vinci correctly predicted the formation of vortices between the cusp and its sinus and appreciated that these would help close the valve.” The surgeon Sherwin Nuland declared, “Of all the amazements that Leonardo left for the ages, this one would seem to be the most extraordinary
Walter Isaacson (Leonardo da Vinci)
something that cannot be memorized and graded: a great doctor must have a huge heart and a distended aorta through which pumps a vast lake of compassion and human kindness. At least, that’s what you’d think. In reality, medical schools don’t give the shiniest shit about any of that. They don’t even check you’re OK with the sight of blood. Instead, they fixate on extracurricular activities. Their ideal student is captain of two sports teams, the county swimming champion, leader of the youth orchestra and editor of the school newspaper. It’s basically a Miss Congeniality contest without the sash. Look at the Wikipedia entry for any famous doctor, and you’ll see: ‘He proved himself an accomplished rugby player in youth leagues. He excelled as a distance runner and in his final year at school was vice-captain of the athletics team.’ This particular description is of a certain Dr H. Shipman, so perhaps it’s not a rock-solid system.
Adam Kay (This is Going to Hurt)
Oh doors of your body There are nine and I have opened them all Oh doors of your body There are nine and for me they have all closed again At the first door Clear Reason has died It was do you remember? the first day in Nice Your left eye like a snake slides Even my heart And let the door of your left gaze open again At the second door All my strength has died It was do you remember? in a hostel in Cagnes Your right eye was beating like my heart Your eyelids throbbed like flowers beat in the breeze And let the door of your right gaze open again At the third door Hear the aorta beat And all my arteries swollen from your only love And let the door of your left ear be reopened At the fourth gate They escort me every spring And listening listening to the beautiful forest Upload this song of love and nests So sad for the soldiers who are at war And let the door of your right ear reopen At the fifth gate It is my life that I bring you It was do you remember? on the train returning from Grasse And in the shade, very close, very short Your mouth told me Words of damnation so wicked and so tender What do I ask of my wounded soul How could I hear them without dying Oh words so sweet so strong that when I think about it I seem to touch them And let the door of your mouth open again At the sixth gate Your gestation of putrefaction oh War is aborting Behold all the springs with their flowers Here are the cathedrals with their incense Here are your armpits with their divine smell And your perfumed letters that I smell During hours And let the door on the left side of your nose be reopened At the seventh gate Oh perfumes of the past that the current of air carries away The saline effluvia gave your lips the taste of the sea Marine smell smell of love under our windows the sea was dying And the smell of the orange trees enveloped you with love While in my arms you cuddled Still and quiet And let the door on the right side of your nose be reopened At the eighth gate Two chubby angels care for the trembling roses they bear The exquisite sky of your elastic waist And here I am armed with a whip made of moonbeams Hyacinth-crowned loves arrive in droves. And let the door of your soul open again With the ninth gate Love itself must come out Life of my life I join you for eternity And for the perfect love without anger We will come to pure and wicked passion According to what we want To know everything to see everything to hear I gave up in the deep secret of your love Oh shady gate oh living coral gate Between two columns of perfection And let the door open again that your hands know how to open so well
Guillaume Apollinaire
when...It can only be silent, heart busy in beats, the contents brain scattered can't think, The blood slips across the entire aorta. there is only one possibility, you are in love!
ikke achmad
If you tell me the size of a mammal, I can use the scaling laws to tell you almost everything about the average values of its measurable characteristics: how much food it needs to eat each day, what its heart rate is, how long it will take to mature, the length and radius of its aorta, its life span, how many offspring it will have, and so on. Given the extraordinary complexity and diversity of life, this is pretty amazing.
Geoffrey West (Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies)
One, needs not, to travel, for discovering God and love; since God lives in its aorta and love breathe and beat, in its heartbeat.
Ehsan Sehgal
BSI’s London office lay equidistant from the Bank of England and St Paul’s, bang in the centre of the City of London, the aorta of the global financial system. The unremarkable building stood on Cheapside, the City thoroughfare laid down by the Romans, where medieval merchants sold sheep’s feet and eels. The Stocks Market at its east end became known for the appalling stench of rotting fare. Around the corner was the Lord Mayor’s residence, the Mansion House. There Tony Blair had leavened a speech about unjust global trade with a reaffirmation that the City ‘creates much of the wealth on which this British nation depends’. From the start, the Swiss financiers who created Banco della Svizzera Italiana, or Swiss-Italian Bank, saw their task as helping money cross national borders. Construction of what was then the world’s longest tunnel, through the St Gotthard massif in the Alps, was under way. It would carry a railway to connect northern and southern Europe. When the work was completed, the Swiss president declared that ‘the world market is open’. The Italian-speaking Swiss city of Lugano lay on the new railway’s route. It was there that BSI’s founders opened a bank in 1873, to capitalise on the new trade route. They did well, expanding in Switzerland and sending bankers abroad. The bank came through one world war. In the second, BSI’s bankers did what many Swiss bankers did: they collaborated with the Nazis. At the same time, they did what they would start to do for their rich clients: they spun a story that reversed the truth. As Swiss bankers and their apologists told the tale, the reason that Switzerland made it a crime to violate bank secrecy was to help persecuted Jews protect their savings. In fact, the law was first drafted in 1932, the year before Hitler came to power. The impetus came not from altruism but self-interest. It was the Great Depression. Governments badly needed to collect taxes.
Tom Burgis (Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World)
My custom has always been to ponder grief; that is, to follow it through ventricle and aorta to find out its lurking places. That old weight in the chest, telling me there is something I must dwell on, because I know more than I know and must learn it from myself—that same good weight worries me these days.
Marilynne Robinson (Gilead (Gilead #1))
I am not a whole, only disjointed pieces held together the way two ventricles taped to an aorta won’t beat.
Anne Marie Wells (Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems)
i had a good trajectory arms open wide heart open even wider but you broke off my limbs severed my aorta all that was left was spilled blood and all i could do to stay alive was burn my heart closed until it cauterized
Michaela Angemeer (Please Love Me at My Worst)
Meantime, I underwent another echocardiogram and a CT test with dye. Turns out, my condition had zero to do with diet or behavior. I was born with a congenital heart defect known as a bicuspid aortic valve, the valve that transports blood flow from the heart. It’s an inherited form of heart disease in which two of the leaflets of the valve fuse together in the womb. It is the most common cause of heart disease present at birth and affects between 1 and 2 percent of adults. The walls of the aorta are typically strong enough to tolerate the stress of blood flow from the heart. Aneurysms—which develop in about half of all patients with bicuspid valves—occur when the walls weaken. As the weakened wall deteriorates, it leaves behind damaged tissue that grows in size, heightening the risk of a serious tear. The aortic valve is supposed to be three centimeters. Mine? The size of a can of Coca-Cola. So that’s why time was of the essence.
Jon Dorenbos (Life Is Magic: My Inspiring Journey from Tragedy to Self-Discovery)
Loneliness is the treasure of my life journey, where I continue to learn about myself and the universe and also feel God in my aorta and hear Him in my heartbeats.
Ehsan Sehgal
Si deseamos una sanación genuina de nuestros corazones—no sólo un arreglar las cosas o vendar la aorta rota del espíritu—debemos cuestionar las suposiciones más fundamentales del ego.
Marianne Williamson (Don del Cambio, El: Una Guia Espiritual para Transformar Su Vida Radicalmente (Spanish Edition))
They're talking as if nothing's happened, Soledad said to herself, and the jealousy ran from her ears into her heart, where it settled into her aorta and reshaped itself as longing and desire, the kind of want that makes one capable of poor but magnanimous decisions.
Derek Palacio (The Mortifications)
Blood vessels, from aorta to capillaries, form another kind of continuum. They branch and divide and branch again until they become so narrow that blood cells are forced to slide through single file. The nature of their branching is fractal. Their structure resembles one o f the monstrous imaginary objects conceived by Mandelbrot's turn-of-the-century mathematicians. As a matter of physiological necessity, blood vessels must perform a bit of dimensionless magic. Just as the Koch curve, for example, squeezes a line of infinite length into a small area, the circulatory system must squeeze a huge surface area into a limited volume. In terms of the body's resources, blood is expensive and space is at a premium. The fractal structure nature has devised works so efficiently that, in most tissue, no cell is ever more than three or four cells away from a blood vessel. Yet the vessels and blood take up little space, no more than about five percent of the body. It is, as Mandelbrot put it, the Merchant of Venice Syndrome-not only can't you take a pound of flesh without spilling blood, you can't take a milligram.
James Gleick (Chaos: Making a New Science)
When a patient presents with symptoms of diabetes or heart disease, and the treatment is lifelong, the general population accepts the diagnosis as a matter of physical health. Unfortunately, diseases of the brain are classified and perceived differently than diseases of the body. Your brain forms your personality. Your behavior is the result of the disease, of the brain misfiring. It’s easier to separate blame and fault from an impaired kidney or a damaged aorta than from an obsessive, compulsive, phobic person.
Rochelle B. Weinstein (Where We Fall)
Stigma is a terrible word in the world of quiet sufferers. Cold Creek, and its staff of professionals, has worked closely with patients and families to relieve them of the shame associated with mental illness. When a patient presents with symptoms of diabetes or heart disease, and the treatment is lifelong, the general population accepts the diagnosis as a matter of physical health. Unfortunately, diseases of the brain are classified and perceived differently than diseases of the body. Your brain forms your personality. Your behavior is the result of the disease, of the brain misfiring. It’s easier to separate blame and fault from an impaired kidney or a damaged aorta
Rochelle B. Weinstein (Where We Fall)
I Went Everywhere *** I went everywhere to search for God Even in worship places And in the old and modern cities But I could not find God When I came to know that God exists near to your aorta I felt and tried to find and look But no sign of visibility One day, I was walking in the streets I saw him at the corner of the street A father and a mother sitting With their two children A girl and a boy on the ground Wearing cracked old clothes Many people were passing near them But no one was paying attention I walked towards them They all looked at me, full of wonder And some hope I put my hand into my coat pocket And brought out all the coins I had And gave to them They looked at the coins and then told me With a cheerful smile, God bless you They all stood and went towards The shop to buy some food I felt like my whole body lightened The smiling of them Gave me a great impression of God I was becoming The real human that God created I found God.
Ehsan Sehgal
Likewise, Egypts vaunted economic reform--the mythology embroidered by the IMF and Washington--had also unraveled by the beginning of the new millennium. During 2000. the Cairo stock market collapsed, losing almost 50 percent of its value. By the end of the year share prices were lower than when the government first revived the exchange in 1995. The real estate boom had gone bust. Ahmed Bahgat , the builder of dreamland, suffered a heart attack in July 2000 while on a trip to Washington, where he was part of an official delegation making an unsuccessful effort to encourage investments from large U.S corporations. When news reached Cairo that he was in a hospital in Bethesda, Maryland,undergoing surgery to the aorta, shares in his company collapsed. Dreamland was effectively bankrupt. Beverly Hills and most of the other smaller developments also came to a halt, as speculators discovered they had overbuilt and luxury property prices dropped by more than half----Dreamworlds of neoliberalism Evil Paradises
Timothy Mitchell
The surface of the Mediterranean is lower than the Atlantic by as much as twenty centimeters, a declivity created by prevailing winds and the rapid evaporation of this warm salty lake between Europe and Africa. The effect is most noticeable at the Strait of Gibraltar, where surface currents run steadily eastward in a flow that peaks at each high tide, like the slow pulsing of blood in some great aorta. Combined with the vendaval, this is today making our navigational goal feel a bit like digging a tunnel with a spoon. A light wind develops from the north, at first a gentle exhalation and before long enough to ruffle the sea surface and raise the occasional crest of foam. We shut down our engine and set sail, exulting in the sudden silence.
Elliot Rappaport (Reading the Glass: A Captain's View of Weather, Water, and Life on Ships)
This was stress cardiomyopathy, also called “broken heart syndrome.” First described by the Japanese in 1990, this disease occurs when an emotional trauma causes the brain to release high doses of stress hormones. This hormonal blast paralyzes the muscle cells of the heart, preventing them from working to pump the blood. Typically only one section of the heart is spared this devastating paralysis—the part closest to the aorta so that with each heartbeat only the upper portion contracts and the heart looks like a narrow-necked vase. The Japanese called it takotsubo, after a type of trap that is used to capture octopus and has the same vase-like shape. For reasons that no one understands, this mostly affects postmenopausal women. There is no cure. There is no clot to bust, no bugs to kill. Like its metaphorical counterpart, the only treatment is support and the passage of time. The initial burst of hormones subsides and the patient must be kept alive until the heart recovers. For those who survive long enough to reach the hospital, the prognosis is good.
Lisa Sanders (Diagnosis: Solving the Most Baffling Medical Mysteries)
are classified and perceived differently than diseases of the body. Your brain forms your personality. Your behavior is the result of the disease, of the brain misfiring. It’s easier to separate blame and fault from an impaired kidney or a damaged aorta than from an obsessive, compulsive, phobic person.
Rochelle B. Weinstein (Where We Fall)
The only reason Marianna had had Bean baptized was to force her mother to listen to the minister declare, in front of the entire congregation, not to mention God, the name of Bean Morrow. A glorious moment. But her mother had proved more resilient than Marianna had thought, like a new strain of superbug. She’d become immune to the name. Aorta, maybe. Aorta Morrow. Or Burp. Damn, that would’ve been perfect.
Louise Penny (A Rule Against Murder (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #4))
aorta,
Paul Levine (Bum Deal (Jake Lassiter #12))
You know how they say you never forget how to ride a bike? Magic's like that. Deeper, even. The knowledge of it inks itself on the inside of your bones, as does the practice, the methodology of execution. You can't unlearn it anymore than you unlearn the symbiosis of ventricle and aorta.
Cassandra Khaw
The more certain details are, the less likely they are to be the greatest matters. It would take all the details on every continent and then some, he thought, as he took a sip of Swan Lager, to add up to complete understanding. The greatest matters lie beyond death, beyond the stars, in the aorta of time. A corpse is a detail. A second of starlight, even from the mid-Pacific sky full of a stars, is a detail. No matter how many details he might acquire, he would never arrive at truth here on the Indian Ocean. No matter. He would settle for a little more knowledge. Let understanding come when it choose.
George Bowering (Harry's Fragments: A Novel of International Puzzlement)
I ask only my God Praying to Him The Divine-inspiration whispers, Revealing that, It is a Key to Universe And Heaven As a reward Patience, Love, Satisfaction And Thanksgiving My heart and mind Become filled with that I feel God is very near To my Aorta.
Ehsan Sehgal
Rojo, ¿Por qué rojo? Hay cientos de colores y en cientos de ciclos el rojo no ha significado nunca nada nuevo. Guerra, sangre, vísceras. Los campamentos de los caníbales son rojos, las murallas de las ciudades del Dios Sol son rojas. El rojo siempre es malo, es muerte eviscerada y decapitada, regando piedras con sangre de aorta, de carótida. Y allí te diriges, aunque podrías dan un rodeo. No tienes prisa y lo haces igualmente, cerda estúpida y egoísta incapaz de pensar en todo lo que hay en juego. Vas a morir y te vas a quedar aquí adornando el lugar con tu mierda de cuerpo mientras todos mueren, maldita asquerosa egoísta.
Carlos Ruiz Santiago (Salvación Condenada (Mundo Subterráneo, #1))
YOU NEVER THINK about the weight of your organs inside you. Your heart is a half-pound clapper hanging off the end of your aorta. Your arms burden your shoulders like buckets on a yoke. The colon uses the uterus as a beanbag chair. Even the weight of your hair imparts a sensation on your scalp. In weightlessness, all this disappears. You organs float inside your torso.* The result is a subtle physical euphoria, an indescribable sense of being freed from something you did not realize was there.
Mary Roach (Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void)
Blood vessels, from aorta to capillaries, form another kind of continuum. They branch and divide and branch again until they become so narrow that blood cells are forced to slide through single file. The nature of their branching is fractal.
James Gleick (Chaos: Making a New Science)
Visitors stream in and out of the rooms and corridors. There are families to see, questions to answer, a new admission from the ED. It’s one thing after another—randomly, it seems—bouncing from one story to the next. Mr. Gunther, headed for the NIH, leaves with his wife. She gives me a long look as they head toward the elevator. I wish her well; living with Pascal’s wager can’t be easy. Mr. Kinney, a dapper corporate attorney, is also getting out of here after a rough two weeks. His pancreas is totally destroyed, replaced by puddles of necrotic fluid, yet he refuses to accept the fact that his fondness for single-malt scotch is the reason why. His wife gives me a long look, too, then they’re gone. Jim, the Cardiology fellow, shows me the echocardiogram he just did on Mr. Warner, our guy with HIV. Nothing there, Jim says, no vegetation, no sign of endocarditis. We consider what this means, make a plan. Up on 10 Central, Mr. Mukaj’s bladder irrigation backs up painfully again but there’s nowhere else we can put him, no empty beds in the ICU or Step-Down Unit, no place where he can have his own nurse with him all the time. We bounce this around, too, decide to try this, then that, we’ll see. Mr. Harris, our patient with Marfan syndrome, a plastic aorta, and a septic hip joint, spikes a fever again. Not good. We make a plan. And so it goes, on into the evening. On days like this, doctoring feels like pinball: nonstop random events—intercepted here, altered there, prolonged or postponed by this or that, the bells and boinks sounding all around—and sometimes you can’t be sure whether you’re the guy pushing the buttons, manipulating the levers, and bumping the machine, or whether you’re inside the machine, whether you’re the pinball itself.
Brendan Reilly (One Doctor: Close Calls, Cold Cases, and the Mysteries of Medicine)
How can I enucleate your roots from my heart, When you colonize my cells, inhabit my veins ,aorta, and my heart? كيف أستأصل جذورك من قلبي، وأنت تستوطن خلايا جسدي، وتسكن أوردتي ، وشراييني ، وقلبي؟
Amany Al-Hallaq
If a day passes without Your cologne sneaking between my lips To my tongue and saliva, melding with my breathe Inhibiting my lungs, mingling with my blood And colonizing my heart, occupying my circulatory system, Scattering through my veins and aortas, Perspiring through my skin’s pores I die of asphyxiation.
Amany Al-Hallaq
I sat, eyes closed, and traced the path of my blood, from the secret, thick-walled chambers of my heart, blue-purple through the pulmonary artery, reddening swiftly as the sacs of the lungs dumped their burden of oxygen. Then out in a bursting surge through the arch of the aorta, and the tumbling race upward and down and out, through carotids, renals, subclavians. To the smallest capillaries, blooming beneath the surface of the skin, I traced the path of my blood through the systems of my body, remembering the feel of perfection, of health. Of peace.
Diana Gabaldon (Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander, #2))