medical students write!

I'm becoming more and more interested in the idea of narrative medicine, storytelling in medicine, and what the humanities can teach us in general. Little things pop up in the hospital everyday that deserve to be written about. Even in our boring electronic medical records little gems pop up, like "the patient lives alone with her dachshund named Piper*."

There are a lot of physicians, other practitioners, and students who feel the same way, from journalists like Atul Gawande, to novelists like Abraham Verghese. I've been exploring a few outlets for medical professionals, one of which is in-Training, a sort of online magazine by and for medical students. They published a poem of mine a few months ago, and more recently an essay about I wrote about coping in the ICU. You can read it, and get a peak into the lives and brains of many other medical students, here.



*this dog's name has been change in accordance with the HIPAA pet privacy act ;)

loveliness in presence

Happy New Year! I hope you are enjoying a bit of time to reflect on 2013 and dream about 2014. And staying warm. I think resolutions are a beautiful thing, especially when they go beyond the typical list of do's and don'ts. 2014 is going to be a very exciting year for me. But first, a bit of reflecting.

I happily have been able to read a lot more than usual over the past 6 weeks, especially during the 2 weeks around Christmas & New Year's.  Growing up, I almost always had 2 novels going at once, but it's been quite a while since I've had enough leisure to do that. It was a great joy to read through Marilynne Robinson's Gilead in just 3 days. This is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. The entire book is a letter written by an elderly pastor in the small town of Gilead, Iowa to his young son. He tells of abolitionists and pacifists, devout friends, deviant sons, and the old man's attempt to find peace and reconciliation in his final days. The language is simple and cuts clean to the reader's heart. Pristine.

Here is a passage that immediately had me writing in the margin:

By “life” I mean something like “energy” (as the scientists use the word) or “vitality”, and also something very different. When people come to speak to me, whatever they say, I am struck by a kind of incandescence in them, the “I” whose predicate can be “love” or “fear” or “want,” and whose object can be “someone” or “nothing” and it won’t really matter, because the loveliness is just in that presence, shaped around “I’ like a flame on a wick, emanating itself in grief and guilt and joy and whatever else. But quick, and avid, and resourceful. To see this aspect of life is a privilege of the ministry which is seldom mentioned.

I think this describes the way I feel about having difficult discussions with patients in the medical setting. Conversations about death and dying, scary diagnoses, psychological turmoil. During my month-long rotation in the ICU this happened pretty regularly, and I found myself feeling better on those days compared to others. I hate to use the word "better" here. Perhaps what I mean is something like more fulfilled, more alive. It's something I tried to explain to my husband, cringing as I used such positive words to describe such a negative situation, failing to explain it even to myself and wondering fearfully if it were just some sort of morbid fascination. But reading these words cleared it up for me. Like a confession these conversations highlighted the presence, the I, of those patients and their families. And what I felt was privileged to be part of such a lovely thing.

stealing joy

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted anything here. The longest yet. I've been thinking a lot about writing lately - writing or reading poetry and short stories, writing as a means of understanding medicine and human interactions. I want to delve into the newly-discovered world of narrative medicine. I should have some time to do so in the coming months, so we will see how far that goes.

In the meantime summer ended. The farmer's market made it's transition from strawberries and asparagus, to every green thing imaginable and berries, to squash and apples, and now it's gone. A chilly August was followed by a warm September and October (relatively speaking), but November  was ushered in with a freeze and I harvested all our potted herbs. The rosebush remains, two buds debating whether or not to bloom. My cooking followed the market trend. Transitioning from salads and things like these noodles to roasted squash, bean stews and all kinds of things with miso. The leaves turned and have almost all fallen, sweaters have migrated to the front of the closet, and I've initiated a daily ten minutes of sitting beside my SAD lamp. Autumn is verging on winter and I am determined to enjoy it by relishing in coziness as much as possible. I'm talking double socks, fun hats and scarves, casseroles and cookies, bubble baths, steam room at the gym, hot tea, poems like "November Night" by Adelaide Crapsey:

Listen. . 
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.

We already had our first snowfall, just a few days ago, it collected and stayed on the ground the whole next day, despite the brightly shining sun, deceptively not warming things up.

Actually, the first snowfall I saw was in October, but most people were asleep and it barely touched the ground before melting. I saw this beautiful snow - barely a fall at all, really a light drifting down, like a feather or crepe paper confetti - because I was up in the middle of the night on the labor and delivery floor of a community hospital, helping/learning how to deliver babies. Delivering a baby is one of the most magical experience I've ever had, and I struggle to describe it adequately. One doctor said it was like "stealing joy". There is something accurate about this, as it indicates that the doctor is still somewhat removed from this new family being formed. An integral part of the experience but ready to transform into bystander as soon as the whole visceral process is over. If you think of joy as something that is not diminished by being shared, but rather increases, then it sounds even more fitting.

But it's more than just the joy of new life (what a presumptive thing to say, just). It's the entirety of this most ancient ritual, born of complete necessity, drenched in blood and vernix (lit. 'fragrant resin'). The hours of the mother contracting, dilating, effacing, breathing. Teaching your gloved fingers to feel blindly for cervix and station, like digging through a bag  of cotton balls trying to find the one that is slightly softer. The absolute miracle of a newborn maneuvering through the cardinal movements of birth, filling his water-clogged lungs with air, remodeling his entire vascular system. A fish becoming a bird. When things go perfectly smoothly, it's seems the baby would have slithered out whether your hands were there guiding him or not (which does occasionally happen even in a hospital!).

That night, minutes after the baby was born, the nurse looked out the window and remarked, we had a little snow angel on our hands. I've delivered four babies so far. And yes, I am most definitely keeping count.

veggie nachos

I took 4 weeks off from clinical rotations last month to study for Step 2 of the medical licensing exam. You might remember me talking about Step 1 last summer, which was much more traumatic. Step 1 seemed like a huge hurdle to overcome on this path to becoming a doctor. By the time Step 2 rolled around, I realized the whole track is filled with hurdles. To keep that metaphor going, it really does remind me of when I did the hurdles on my high school track team. The first hurdle was terrifying, coming out of the blocks and the brief seconds leading up to the first leap. But once I made that first one, I found this rhythm - step, step, hurdle, step, step, hurdle - and the hurdles became less of an obstacle and more just a part of the way I ran. In some ways, medical education is like that. I know that I will continue to face small daily challenges, occasional monumental ones, and everything in between, which allows a sort of rhythm and acceptance.

During that month of studying, alone, day after day, alone, I wrote this on the edge of a to-do list:

I can already feel
how when it's all over
I'll look back
and say,
"It wasn't so bad, really."

In hindsight that sounds like a reassuring realization, but at the time it wasn't. At the time it seemed devastating. Because it meant that I would be brushing off one of those challenges as if I had accomplished nothing, telling my friends "you'll be fine, it's not so bad", and leaving them to feel alone when the the hurdle looked a little bit too high off there in the distance. We do this to ourselves over and over, and it's one of the unexpected ways that medical school has struck me as an emotional challenge.

The more I think of this though, the more I think it's actually a sign of something really good. When we stand at the finish line and look back at the hurdles we crossed, they don't look nearly as threatening because we know we just made it over all of them. And it's natural to say that it was worth it all - the fear, the planning, the training, the sacrifices - because we are doing exactly what we were meant to be doing, what we signed up for, what we are called to. So now when I look back at my weeks of studying, I see that those days took on a beautiful cycle. Each morning I woke up, made a smoothie, studied, went to a yoga class, made a tomato sandwich or salad for lunch, studied, practiced mindfulness meditation, studied, made mushrooms and greens for dinner, studied, read something non-medical, went to sleep. There was very little variance to that schedule and that type of life works really nicely for me. I haven't made it to a yoga class since, and my mindfulness practice has nearly disappeared.

But I am not here to complain. I am here to remind myself that that was good, but impractical for today. I am here to say that I will find a way to keep some of those things in my life no matter what else is going on.

The one thing that is easiest for me to keep around, and to keep myself connected to a sense of wellness is food. Going to the farmers' market, keeping a fridge full of produce, and eating fresh wholesome meals at least twice a day are things that I have managed to maintain. One of my favorite meals this summer is vegetarian nachos. They are quick and easy, there is no need to follow a recipe once you get the idea, and it's an easy way to use up whatever happens to be on hand. The combination I had yesterday was particularly stellar, so I decided it was time to share it with you. And I'd love to hear, what is the thing that keeps you connected to yourself when life starts to get in the way?

Vegetarian Nachos for 2:
Blue corn tortilla chips
4 oz. ground seitan (My favorite is Upton's chorizo)
1/4 cup red onion, diced
1 handful chopped kale
1/2 a zucchini, sliced into thin half-moons
1 avocado, peeled & sliced
1/4 cup crumbled feta
Tomatillo salsa, to taste (I used this one)

Heat a bit of oil in a small pain over low heat and add the seitan, stir occasionally, cook until warm.

Meanwhile, spread some chips out onto a plate. Layer on the already chopped veggies, the seitan, the avocado, and the feta. Finally top with salsa to taste.

Enjoy with a Corona and lime on the patio and savor the remaining days of this fleeting summer.

to remind myself of mindfulness

In the midst of studying for yet another major exam, it seems like a good time to return to why I started this blog. It's easy to be dragged down by monotonous days, but even in the simplest day there are many beautiful simple things, things that make life wonderful if we would just notice them. I've been learning more about the idea of mindfulness in terms of mindfulness based stress reduction and  Zen Buddhism. There's a lot more to share about this, but right now the part that I'm working on in my own life is trying to keep my mind connected to my body, rather than letting it wander into the future, even as I think about the future.

Here are a few things that have helped me to do that in the last couple weeks, shared with the hope that they will help you notice more in your own day-to-day life:

• Looking up at the moon always fills me with a peaceful energy, admiring the recent "super moon" was an incredible moment.
• The way the light streams in my kitchen window in the morning.
• Biking to the farmer's market.
• Fireflies, which always remind me of summers at my grandparents' house.
• Making oatmeal pancakes before Ian left for Italy, and listening to Chelsea Morning. That song always helps me start the day.
• "I release all disappointment from my mental, emotional, physical and spiritual body, because I know that spirit guides me and love lives inside me." -India Arie

the land of enchantment

Our recent trip to New Mexico was truly enchanting. I find myself returning to certain moments in my mind; like I've made little souvenirs out of the smell of sage pulled off a desert bush mingled with burning wood, and the image of pink rock layered with orange buildings and blue sky. It does feel like there is a muse lurking in that landscape - but maybe I just want to identify with Georgia O'Keefe, who never tired of painting a little door in Abiquiu and rafted the Colorado River at the age of 74. The week was also laced with juniper berries, poems by Anne Carson, and friendship. You can read about a few more details I shared on the travel website Afar.

things are falling into place

“Eventually all things fall into place. Until then, laugh at the confusion, live for the moments, and know everything happens for a reason."― Albert Schweitzer .

looking at art

A few weeks ago I went to the Chicago Art Institute. I always feel rejuvenated after visiting an art museum. It pulls me out of my head and distracts me from all the mundane things I worry about unnecessarily on a daily basis. This trip seemed long over-do, and somehow reflecting on it now makes me realize how much this past month was recovering from the prior five.

I began by studying some photographs, comparing the differences between printing and developing methods, reading the name of each artist, title, and materials. Then I set out through the contemporary building and decided that I was not going to read anything. Instead I would just focus on the painting itself – I could only take in so many words and changing my focus constantly was becoming somewhat dizzying. Often though, I couldn’t help myself and I needed the curator’s enlightening descriptions. I made my way through a few connected rooms and, quite pleased with what I had seen, stepped back into the hallway. Suddenly overwhelmed by how much was housed in a single wing of this building, I considered calling it a day - until I thought of all the beautiful paintings that would be in the next room over, so many artists I love. I decided that I had to walk through a few more rooms, just to be in the presence of such beauty and wonder. I stood to look at a painting, but rather than study it I let the whole room flood over me, with such richness that it far surpassed any one masterpiece.

Somehow my few hours immersed in artwork mirrored my recent experiences as a third year medical student, at least in sentiment. I have many stories to tell, each of them great on their own, but all together they make up something greater. Something I don’t yet have the words for and maybe never will. But it is wonderful, this mixture of excitement and anxiety, sadness and relief, complete engagement and detachment. And there has been an overarching sense of being overwhelmed. Not in the way I felt overwhelmed by the massive amount I had to learn in anatomy, not a sense of something being unconquerable or time being too short, but such a flood of experience that I will need some time to pull myself up out of the water before I can reflect on it all.

In contrast to all that, my few days of Christmas vacation have been so beautifully simple. I’m back in Texas, and I think that adds to the feeling, both for its reminder of my youth as well as the basic kindness of strangers that goes hand in hand with southern hospitality. I’ve been relishing in walks through the neighborhood, blue skies, green leaves still hanging to trees, and lazy mornings with my family. I think it’s the perfect transition into the new semester, with a new confidence that I know what I want to do with my future, and a renewed connection with the idea of becoming not just a doctor but a healer.

I saw some art again today. This time it was the Menil Collection, a much more manageable, focused collection of art. I walked through the naturally lit rooms, surrounded by beauty, and felt like I was able to take it all in and process it to some degree. My last stop was the Rothko Chapel, and left with a profound feeling of peace.

I hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas and are filled with love and joy as we begin to look towards the new year.

metamorphoses

Yesterday we saw Mary Zimmerman's "Metamorphoses", performed by the Looking Glass theatre. It was the best play I have ever seen, wrought with heartache and love and longing. I cried a good bit during a particularly heart-wrenching scene, and was so pleased with it at the end of the play that I almost began crying again as we applauded. I wanted to personally thank everybody who made those stories come to life. If you are in Chicago, or ever hear of this work playing in your city, you should absolutely go see it. I'll leave you with a beautiful passage:

“A: The soul wanders in the dark, until it finds love. And so, wherever our love goes, there we find our soul.
Q: It always happens?
A: If we're lucky. And if we let ourselves be blind.
Q: Instead of watching out?
A: Instead of always watching out.”

t2: how to have a feast

My mother-in-law is visiting this weekend for Thanksgiving, except that she didn't come until Friday, which means we had to have a second celebration. Necessarily. It was fun to play hostess and roast my first turkey. Okay, so she took care of the turkey, but I watched. I mean, I don't really eat meat usually, so I had no clue. I've never spent a whole day preparing for a meal like this before, so it was definitely a learning experience. I'm so glad we had some great friends to share it all with!

you will have to start with a full refrigerator

and wash multiple sinks-full of dishes

on a chilly day like today, you can always chill some things outside since the fridge is as stuffed as your belly is going to be

you might have to sneak away for a book break every now and then

the cats will be ready long before the turkey is served

but finally the spread will be out, friends will arrive, and you'll be having such a nice time you'll completely forget that you wanted to take more photographs of the evening.

thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is such a wonderful holiday. It's so much simpler than Christmas. Sure, there's a big dinner to prepare, but I think sharing good food with friends and family is one of the nicest things you can do. Now that we live in Chicago, we have spent Thanksgiving with some more distant relatives for the past 3 years. It's comforting to be with family, and to know that they are nearby should we ever need them, even if we are separated by a few branches on the family tree. I always bring a different side dish, and this year I was proudly named the vegetable queen. Fresh green beans the first year that definitely outshined your standard mushy casserole, kale salad last year that gave some people their first taste of that amazing vegetable, and Brussels sprouts this year.

It's good to have a simple holiday, allowing plenty of time to just sit and relax with family, and to reflect on all that we have to be grateful for. It feels a bit cliché to write about this, but we really don't take enough time for this in our normal hectic lives. I'm sure we would all be much happier and healthier if we did so. Just having 4 days away from the hospital is a major blessing! Already I've listened to good music with friends, gone to a yoga class, taken a few walks, cleaned the apartment, lounged around after the big meal, watched the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, slept for 11 hours last night (!), and it's only Friday.

While I was preparing the Brussels sprouts and Ian was washing dishes, we listened to the radio a bit and were intrigued by a question the reporter posed (rhetorically?) to the audience: What books are you thankful for? As we thought about it we realized that this is very different than asking what your favorite books are. Right now, I'm thankful for the Brothers Karamazov because I'm really enjoying it right now. Interestingly, one of the first books I thought of is called Anticancer, which talks about how diet, exercise, and stress affect our health in a very significant way. I think reading this book played a big role in sparking my interest in integrative & preventative medicine, which has influenced my life in a major way. I'm not sure what else, but I really like this question and plan to think on it a bit more.

How about you, what books are you thankful for?

being present while cycling

 
One of the beautiful things about riding a bicycle is that you can't multitask. When I'm in the car, I feel the need to be talking on the phone or looking at something at every stop light. That's not really an option on a bicycle. So instead, I notice things like how the pink morning sky is so bright that for about 47 seconds everything glows neon, and the interesting combination of autumn's mums with the few choice rose bushes that have chosen to continue blooming, and a woman sitting on a balcony, playing with her granddaughter. People say hello when they pass by on foot or bicycle. And when I get to wherever I'm going, I feel like I'm ready to be there because I was really present throughout the journey.

first day of fall

Today is the autumn equinox. I enjoyed it with doughnuts and coffee at the farmer's market. A cool breeze announced the new season's arrival, but the sunshine helped to balance out my premature Christmas song reflex (in Houston, 46 F is a perfectly acceptable late December temperature).  Apples, butternut squash, and fava beans made their way into my bag and I can't wait to cook up some savory dishes. Along with autumnal flavors and cozy sweaters, I always find myself craving some good jazz music this time of year, especially Vince Guaraldi. I'm not sure why, it just always happens.

the fifth season

Since moving up here from Texas, I have delighted in the changing seasons, and written about them quite a bit here. They change the way one experiences the world - looking forward to summer means something new entirely. It's not just time off from school, it's sunshine and greenness and fresh berries. Certainly this made my mother's childhood somewhat different from my own. Here, I savor the heat; back home it was something I tried to avoid. Well, I just want to add onto my other seasonal revelations that I have discovered that perhaps there are more than just four. I'm pretty sure there should be a 5th season: end-of-summer. It's still hot and the sun still hangs in bright blue skies, but when it sets things are a bit more golden, and you might notice a few leaves showing their spines or fading, ever-so-slightly, into yellow. It's a lovely time of year.

Here are a few photos from my end-of-summer. I've had a whopping 10 days off between surgery and medicine clerkships, and they have been glorious. There was yoga on the beach, camping, lazy pancake mornings, plenty of time for our new kitty, and a belated birthday party.

 

The party menu:

1. blini bar with crème fraiche, roasted onions, bean spread
2. heirloom tomato salad
3. zucchini salad
4. roasted carrots (recipe below)
5. summertime shandy/radler/clara [tasty by any name]
6. corn salad and amazing baked goods from friends!

It was a lovely evening, and I was so happy to be surrounded by so many great friends in my own home. Like I said, I need to cook for people more often.

Finally, a recipe! These roasted carrots are incredibly straight forward, but absolutely delicious. They are one of my favorites to bring to parties because they actually get people to want to put more vegetable on their plate. Even people who don't like carrots.

Roasted Cumin Carrots:

Preheat oven to 400 F
Wash and peel several large carrots. Cut them into french-fry size sticks.
Spread onto a baking sheet in a single layer.
Drizzle with olive oil and rub it around with your hands so that they all are well-coated. Sprinkle with cumin seeds and cinnamon.
Bake for about 40 minutes, until the edges begin to brown and caramelize. It's okay if they start to burn a teeny bit.

cooking for two

One day, in the middle of last week, I knew that I was going to be able to sleep in the next morning. My current definition of sleeping in is waking up any time after the sun rises high enough to pass a ray of light through one of my windows. Any one of them, I'm not picky. so long as I'm not leaving my house in the dark and driving to work passing party-goers making their final stop at the McDonald's drive-through. In celebration of that fact I invited a friend over for dinner with plans to take a walk and get ice cream afterwards. It was a simple evening, but we relished our taste of freedom and our bit of summer. I've been craving lazy summer days each time I see a block party or a wet-headed, pig-tailed girl riding a bicycle. But now is the time for surgery, and I have plenty of summers yet to live.

Our evening was simple. We introduced our pets and discovered that Zenith is scared of playful dogs. I heard him hiss for the first time ever, which made me a bit sad because he has never hissed at other cats. For dinner I made a salad and corn on the cob. Much of it was fresh from the farmer's market: the corn, butter with garlic scapes, tomato, cucumber, baby mustard greens and a soft buttery lettuce, tarragon white vinegar, sourdough bread. I don't usually peel cucumbers, but this time I did, and I added the peels to a pitcher of water and chilled it in the fridge. I chopped things up and made a dressing. I briefly boiled the sweet corn and slathered it with butter. I was having such a good time before my friend even arrived.

 It made me realize how much I enjoy preparing food for other people. It can be a luxury to prepare a good meal for yourself, but there's something very special about creating a dish - even a basic lettuce & veggie salad - that you will share with somebody else. It makes peeling cucumbers, using up the very last tomato, or splurging on some fresh herbs all seem completely worthwhile. That food becomes a sort of offering, a gift, a poem, an expression of love and friendship, it says "I care about you. I will feed you tasty things."

I'm going to try to have people over for dinner more often. Or lunch, or brunch, or coffee, whatever my crazy schedule will allow. Let me know if you want to come, feel free to invite yourself, my kitchen is open. And I will definitely be throwing myself a birthday party next month - I can't wait to come up with the menu.

sharing travel stories

Part of what I love about traveling is looking for great places to go while I'm there - the best gelato in Italy, a private art gallery, a beautiful rooftop view. This website is a great forum for travelers to find these kinds of recommendations. I've posted a few of my own highlights from my time in Freiburg & Berlin.

I've also uploaded a few video clips. They could use some more work - I'm afraid you will have to put up with the sound of me panting as I climb a hill - but it's a fun way to save and share memories. I used a fun iPhone app called 8mm to record them.

a few photos from Berlin

step one

Step 1. Completed.

 

In the meantime, life kept going on. Ian completed a couple translations and his first syllabus; my sister threw the shot put for 4th place at nationals, graduated from college and got a job back in Houston (I'm so proud & happy for her!); my grandmother got a new aortic valve (!); Egypt had elections; France has a new president.

I'm so happy to re-join the rest of the world again. Well, at least until my surgery rotation begins...

cooking in a european apartment

As you can see, our kitchen situation is pretty limited here. I'm beginning to get a bit bored with it to be honest, but for the first two weeks it was a lot of fun to see how creative I could be. I don't have any recipes to share with you, but maybe the following pictures will spark some ideas. We had several meals that turned out to be quite good. They began with me pulling out the few ingredients that fit in our mini fridge and throwing something together, each step of the process inspiring the next without much foresight. Then we would sit down to eat, commenting: "hm, not bad..." (a few more bites)  "actually, it's pretty good..." (a few more bites) "Mmm, this is great!"

this recipe + carrots + garam masala

note: that's Turkey the country, not the bird, but I'm to lazy to re-edit the photo

this idea came from here. it's delicious

downtown Freiburg

I have only spent one day in downtown Freiburg. Actually, only half of one. It's pretty sad, but I'm trying my best to accept that that's just the way things are for now and it's just for a limited time. 28 days actually.

Freiburg is much livelier than I had expected, at least in comparison to our quiet neighborhood on the edge of the Black Forest. Close to half the street traffic is probably people on bicycles, so there are bike lanes everywhere! We really just wandered about the city without a plan (or as we would say in German, wir sind gebummelt), but the day was filled with many little pleasantries. Like stumbling upon the former home of philosopher Edmund Husserl,

or unexpectedly interesting spots around the university.

Hmm.. what else have I got? I didn't bring my camera, just my iPhone, but here are a few more pictures for you. Hopefully, soon I will return to the city and will have more of a story to tell.

Münster Cathedral

Beer, of course.

sitting on the steps

of Augustiner Platz

where they even have an Occupy movement.

schwarzwald rain showers

I will be spending the next 6 weeks in Europe. Mostly in Freiburg, studying for the USMLE Step 1. Ian is taking a semester of classes at the Albert Ludwigs Universität, which was more than enough of an excuse for me to come along.

It's a short walk into the Black Forest from our apartment, where we have gone almost every day. It really is a fairytale land. On Sunday we took a path that led up to a clearing, offering a gorgeous view of houses nestled into the hillside. As soon as we reached the top of the hill we saw that there were huge rainclouds headed our way. We decided to keep walking anyway, figuring that we would get wet even if we did turn back. We managed to take a bit of refuge under some trees and didn't get too wet after all. It was amazing to watch this storm pass over the distant city, temporarily disrupting our view of the buildings, and finally to clear once again to bright blue skies and chirping birds.

 

                                                                                                                                                                  

By the way, if you happen to be studying for Step 1 also, or just happen to be interested in the embryological development of the heart, don't miss out on this video - it's a gem!