{"id":5810,"date":"2015-10-20T16:36:35","date_gmt":"2015-10-20T20:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/?p=5810"},"modified":"2015-11-09T16:50:14","modified_gmt":"2015-11-09T21:50:14","slug":"quyen-chu-dc90-med94-beyond-the-limits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/2015\/quyen-chu-dc90-med94-beyond-the-limits\/","title":{"rendered":"Quyen Chu DC\u201990, MED\u201994: Beyond the Limits"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ann Klein<\/em><\/p>\n

The world opened up to Quyen Chu DC\u201990, M\u201994, when he was accepted to Dartmouth College and later to medical school. Now, he\u2019s made plans to help future students through a bequest intention to the Geisel School of Medicine and Dartmouth College.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Quyen Chu gazed across the Dartmouth Green. It was 1986, and the 18-year-old had just stepped off a Greyhound bus carrying a duffel bag stuffed with pretty much everything he owned.<\/p>\n

\"Dr.
Dr. Quyen Chu DC\u201990, MED\u201994<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He thought about Vietnam, where his family had lived until the war ended when he was seven. He thought about the simple barbershop in Tavares, Florida, where his father\u2014once an Army captain\u2014worked long hours to support his family of six. He thought about all the times he\u2019d told his friends he couldn\u2019t hang with them because he was out of town, when in reality, he was picking up aluminum cans along a roadside with his dad or cleaning a church with his mom to help make ends meet.<\/p>\n

He thought about the day his mother had appeared at the door of his high school physics class with a huge smile on her face and a letter from Dartmouth in her hand.<\/p>\n

Now, as he watched other students toss plastic discs, framed by Georgian-style brick buildings, he wondered: Could he fit in at an Ivy League college?<\/p>\n

A young man approached.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey,\u201d the student said. \u201cYou wanna play some Frisbee?\u201d<\/p>\n

With that, Quyen was off and running.<\/p>\n

Never Forgotten<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now a professor of surgery and chief of surgical oncology at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, Dr. Quyen Chu performs as many as 350 procedures annually, including esophagectomies, liver resections, and complex abdominal surgeries. He\u2019s written two textbooks, 19 book chapters, and 178 publications and abstracts. He\u2019s won numerous awards and in 2013 was appointed by President Barack Obama to the Board of the Vietnam Education Foundation.<\/p>\n

But he\u2019s never forgotten the medical school and college that believed in him enough to offer a nearly full scholarship. He\u2019s grateful for professors who knew him by name and honed his critical thinking skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey really listened, and they challenged us to think beyond what was printed on papers,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Helping Those in Need<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most of the individuals Dr. Chu treats now are of limited means, and often, their circumstances delay seeking treatment or get in the way of following instructions. That\u2019s when he reaches back for his father\u2019s words: \u00a0\u201cIt was not so long ago that your parents were in those shoes. Your patients may have nothing in life, but the one thing they can be proud of is that they have the very best surgeon taking care of them. Don\u2019t forget that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He hasn\u2019t. For the past three summers, he has traveled to war-ravaged Kurdistan to perform free surgeries. He and his wife, Trina, a lawyer, have also made plans for a generous bequest to the Geisel School of Medicine and Dartmouth College.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes my breath away to picture the 18-year-old kid that I was,\u201d he says. \u201cUntil then, the only world I knew was a world of poverty and a world of limits. \u00a0I am just so thankful.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The world opened up to Quyen Chu DC\u201990, M\u201994, when he was accepted to Dartmouth College and later to medical school. Now a successful surgeon, he gives back to help others, including those half a world away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":5811,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[17,642],"class_list":["post-5810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-news","tag-alumni-2","tag-giving-back","post_format-post-format-aside","author-15"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/10\/chu_quyen_web.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-1vI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5810"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5816,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5810\/revisions\/5816"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}