Inflammation

Damage in tissues will lead
To responses which host is in need
To confine and dissolve
Repair and resolve
The lesion to which it takes heed.

A most unique form of reaction
A chemical type interaction
Of vessels and cells
Humors as well
Resembles magnetic attraction.

Vessels dilate their walls seep
Right through them polymorphs creep
Chemotaxis their guide
From points far and wide
Into the battle they leap.

Over bands of fine fibrin they go
Through edema their pseudopods row
In currents that eddy
With lysosomes ready
Engulf then dissolving the foe.

The lesion's red swollen and hot
Painful and filled with dead rot
It's called inflammation
Is self-preservation
May limit your function a lot.

As the most acute phases subside
There are changes occurring inside
Macrophages appear
For there's debris to clear
Endothelial cells then divide.

New vessels invade and extend
Penetrating with buds on the end
Followed at last
By the young fibroblast
Making collagen aiming to mend.

Inflammation is meant to be good
That's the way it would be if it would
Remain in proportion
Avoid all distortion
Resolve at the time that it should.

But edema that's gone to excess
May expand compromise and compress
Lung larynx and brain
When swollen are lame
Can quickly produce great distress.

Pus from an abscess can spread
Under skin or by veins in the head
Seeding foci erratic
That are metastatic
With symptoms and signs A to zed.

Scars are intended to bind
But when they're too large you will find
They distort and constrict
Function restrict
Form lesions quite special in kind.

For example there's mitral stenosis
Keliods and liver cirrhosis
Obstruction cerebral
Urethral vertebral
Most frequent is artherosclerosis.

Inflammation may last and turn chronic
Situation that is most ironic
Instead of defending
Result is offending
Protractive destructive demonic.