Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down free essay sample

Summary of The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down In ‘The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down’, Lia, a Hmong baby girl, is born to a Hmong family living in California as refugees away from their war torn land in Laos. In Laos the Lee’s where farmers and lived in the country according to their Hmong traditions and beliefs. In California they barely understood the language, much less Western culture or medicinal practices.In Hmong tradition, illness was seen as a spiritual problem rather than a physical problem and a Shaman that practiced spiritual ceremonies and used natural remedies was sought to prevent or cure certain illnesses and/or diseases; so when Lia suffered her first seizure at the age of 3 months and was taken to Mercer Hospital in California for treatment, it marked the beginning of the clash of two different worlds and two different cultures and Lia was caught in the middle of it all. There are about five main important events in the story of Lia Lee.The first Chapter goes through the traditional birthing methods and traditions of the Hmong people. One of the most noteworthy traditions is the burying the placenta. The placenta has to be purposefully buried in a specific spot under the home’s dirt floor so when the individual dies its soul has to travel back to the placenta. This chapter also introduces the characters Nao Kao and Foua Lee, Lia Lee’s parents. In the first chapter Nao gives birth to Lia Lee in an American hospital, their first child to be born in a hospital. Lia was born July 19, 1982.The baby appeared to be healthy and was released from the hospital 3 days later. The main focus of this chapter is comparing the birth of the children in Laos (where Nao and Foua were from) to the American birthing traditions. The next important event in the story is Chapter 3 titled â€Å"The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down†. This chapter introduces the beginning of Lia’ seizures as her older sister slammed the front door of their apartment and all of a sudden Lia starts seizing for the first time. This would be the beginning of many more seizures to come.In Hmong culture seizures are not recognized much as a physical illness as it is spiritual in nature and quab dab peg which translates to, the spirit catches you and you fall down, describes the group of symptoms experienced by Lia in the Hmong culture. The Lee’s were both happy and sad about Lia’s seizures. In Hmong culture seizures are considered to have special powers and usually become Shamans, but at the same time the Lees were worried about their child’s health. The story draws attention to the disadvantage that the language barrier caused in the Chapter titled â€Å"Take as Directed†. This chapter talks about how the parents don’t follow the doctor’s orders in giving Lia the proper dosing regimen. The staff and doctor’s didn’t know if her parents simply did not want to give her the medicine or if they basically didn’t know or understand what to do. Lia’s suffers a grand mal seizure during this chapter and gets intubated and placed on a ventilator to keep her alive. To make matters worse, the doctors start to believe that the seizures are causing retardation and that if Nao and Foua would give the child the medicine as directed she would be getting better.Finally a decision is made among medical staff that placing Lia under Foster care may be in her best interest in order to assure a proper dosing regimen. Chapter 9 titled â€Å"A little Medicine and a Little Neeb† describes Lia’s homecoming. Her family spent $300 on a cow that they sacrificed for Lia’s health. The Lee’s devoted a lot of time and money into Lia’s health. They took Lia to Minnesota to visit a twix neeb, they also were giving her proper dosages of her medication. Lia’s was getting a lot better and started attending school.She fell off of a swing one day and started to seize, it was a very serious seizure and three weeks after she was discharged she was admitted again. The doctors are faced with a problem because they don’t know what else to do to prevent the seizures and they fear that one day Lia may have a seizure they can’t stop, and she might die. Unfortunately in Chapter 11 titled â€Å"The Big One† one day before Thanksgiving, Lia had a seizure and her dad called his nephew to get an ambulance.Once she arrived at MCMC, Doctor Neil was unable to stop her seizures. She went into status epilepticus which means that, no matter how many drugs they gave her, she kept on seizing. She was then transferred to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit in Fresno after she finally stopped seizing. Everyone thought that Lia was going to die and they were just waiting for it to happen. The Lee’s took her back home to be with the family. In Chapter 13 Code X – In this chapter Lia is left with severe brain damage.There is a misunderstanding in the hospital between the parents and doctors and she is ripped from her tubes by her father in an attempt to take her home, at which time the hospital calls a Code X, and she is recovered and re-intubated, only to go home four hours later. At home her mother provides all her care and Lia’s is described as looking beautiful all the time. Re-Imagining the Story of Lia Lee When re-imagining Lia’s story in such a way that would lead to a more successful outcome for all involved, the first question that comes to mind is what could Lia’s parents have done to improve their daughter’s outcome?If her parents would have known how to speak English, maybe there would have been more understanding and communication between them and the medical community. This may not have solved all of the cultural differences but at least there may have been an even flow and exchange of information and feedback between both parties involved. The parents could have agreed to receive training, teaching and instruction on proper prescription medication dosing for Lia by a Hmong nurse or Hmong social worker or more accepted ‘cultural broker’ in addition to practicing any animal sacrifices for Lia.Another thing her parents could have done was to bring a Shaman to be translated by an English speaking Hmong interprete r and explain to the doctors the Hmong culture, traditions and beliefs as they related to Lia’s condition. When asking what could Drs. Ernst and Philip have done to provide Lia with a better quality of care they could have made an effort to learn more of the Hmong language or provide a non-threatening interpreter in order to ensure more understanding, communication and feedback from the Lee family.They could have been more open to their cultural beliefs and traditions and try to find some middle ground to work with Lia’s needs and the needs of her parents. They could have respected their traditions and beliefs and found a way to incorporate both into her care, even if it meant being a bit more unconventional and providing a more simple dosing regimen with the least amount of change in medications as possible without the need for tapering and tweaking of meds. In many instances throughout the story, home health visits were placed to reassure Lia’s care.Jeanine Hilt’s efforts were the most successful, but it should have taken place earlier in Lia’s story and not have taken the removal of custody to get to that point. The doctor’s could have sought out a Hmong speaking nurse that the Lee’s could trust or someone like Jeanine Hilt early on to make a difference. When asking what could the hospital administrator and personnel have done to provide Lia with a better quality of care, I would suggest that they provide interpreters that are non- threatening for the Hmong community of patients they serve. They could have provided specific Hmong culture training to their staff of doctors and nurses.They could have incorporated into their hospital food menus and diets specific Hmong foods and teas customary to the Hmong culture. A combination of Eastern medicine and Western medicine could have been implemented in the care and treatment of Lia so that the parents could be more cooperative with her care. In conclusion, any effort to better understand the Hmong customs and traditions in the care of Lia would have resulted in a better outcome for everyone involved. The parents and doctors both wanted the best for Lia, but their ideas about the causes of her illness and its treatment could hardly have been more different.The Hmong see illness and healing as spiritual matters linked to virtually everything in the universe, while the medical community marks a division between body and soul, and concerns itself almost exclusively with the former. Lias doctors ascribed her seizures to the misfiring of her cerebral neurons; her parents called her illness, qaug dab pegthe spirit catches you and you fall downand ascribed it to the wandering of her soul. The doctors prescribed anticonvulsants; her parents preferred a nimal sacrifices. References Fadiman, A. (1998). The spirit catches you and you fall down. Frrar, Straus and Giroux : New York