Sage Hill Alumnus Zach Chandy (’06) recently traveled to India with six other UC Irvine medical students to learn first hand about disease, medicine and surgery.

The students witnessed life-threatening operations and life-changing experiences-—for Chandy, one event was a tongue transplant at the Mazumdar-Shaw Cancer Hospital. He described the surgery in a blog post as “quite gruesome, with the lower lip pulled off the mandible in an ungodly position.”

 “The surgeon and the [cancer] patient,” Chandy explained, “had decided to perform an aggressive surgery to remove the tongue, floor of the mouth and larynx to extend his life expectancy to one year.”

He wrote that the patient would “would regain the ability to swallow liquid and minced foods.”

This surgery made such an impression on Chandy that he began to consider surgery as a future career, altering his perspective on how important surgery is in our world today. Chandy wrote that though he “couldn’t imagine [the patient] getting any better care [than] he did with the doctors at Mazumdar-Shaw.”

Chandy’s father, Dr. K. George Chandy, a professor at the UCI School of Medicine, led the trip to India, where the students spent time at Dr. Chandy’s alma mater, Christian Medical College in Vellore, as well as in rural villages and the metropolis of Bangalore.

To learn more about the students’ experiences, visit their blog and read Orange County Register’s article.