• Where—New York, New York, USA. The family agrees, but misunderstands the reason—they think that Neil is handing off the case to take a vacation. Along with a large influx of Hmong, Lia lived in Merced, CA when she experienced her first seizures. While Fadiman is keenly aware of the frustrations of doctors striving to provide medical care to those with such a radically different worldview, she urges that physicians at least acknowledge their patients' realities. Chapter 11 the spirit catches you and you fall down menu. Compare them to the techniques used when Lia was born (p. 7). The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is the story of Lia Lee's struggle with epileptic seizures and the conflict between her parents and doctors as they seek healing for her. And I am fairly wedded to it, but I really appreciated this look into a culture so different from my own. Sherwin Nuland said of the account, "There are no villains in Fadiman's tale, just as there are no heroes. Categorization and classification is the 'bread-and-butter' of science. It infuriated me how the Lees were seen as ignorant and evil because they killed animals in hopes of appeasing the spirits who they thought had taken Lia's soul.
They were of the Hmong culture, a people who inhabited mountaintops and all they wanted was to be left alone. Given this discordance in the fundamentals of each culture's worldview, the question that begs to be answered is: could things have gone differently? She was immediately taken to the cubicle in the ER reserved for the most critical cases. An interesting story that highlights the many cultural differences between Americans and our immigrants (in this case the Hmong culture). By the time the final seizure came for Lia Lee, her family actively distrusted the people working at the Merced Community Medical Center. Chapter 11 the spirit catches you and you fall down essays. It's definitely not a black and white area but rather a large grey one.
Friends & Following. One of my friends read it for an undergrad ethics course. It begins with a toddler, Lia Lee, living in California in the 1980s. When doctors tried to obtain permission to perform two more invasive diagnostic tests along with a tracheostomy, a hole cut into the windpipe, they noted that the parents consented -- yet Foua and Nao Kao had little understanding of what they had been told. Was any other solution possible in the situation? How did the EMT's and the doctors respond to what Neil referred to as Lia's "big one"? This is a must-read, especially if you know little about the Hmong as I did. Many eventually immigrated to America, a country whose culture is vastly at odds with theirs. The Hmong see illness aand healing as spiritual matters linked to virtually everything in the universe, while medical community marks a division between body and soul, and concerns itself almost exclusively with the former. DR. B: Because I was studying medicine. Stream Chapter 11 - The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down from melloky | Listen online for free on. However, there have been reports (all denied by governments and by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) that some Hmong have been forced to return and then been persecuted or killed. The different levels of engagement the Lee family had with various westerners was particularly telling, and explained a lot about the wildly varying opinions people had formed.
Fadiman also portrayed the doctors as motivated overall by good intentions. Finding this form of balance is truly an impressive feat. Into this heart-wrenching story, Fadiman weaves an account of Hmong history from ancient times to the present, including their work for the CIA in Laos and their resettlement in the U. S., their culture, spiritual beliefs, ethics, and etiquette. This is a fantastic work of journalistic nonfiction. The clipped phrase "consent is implied" indicates a doctor is about to perform a dangerous procedure on Lia. Fadiman tells the story rather skillfully - (but? ) Over many centuries the Hmong fought against a number of different peoples who claimed sovereignty over their lands; they were also forced to emigrate from China. Do you sympathize with it? A shaman would be there to conduct the right ceremony. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman. I find that non-fiction books often err on the side of being either informative but too dry, or engaging but also too sensationalist/one-sided. That's a far cry from the typical American who eats it every day and sometimes at every meal. It was shocking to look at the bar graphs comparing the Hmong with the Vietnamese, the Cambodians and the Lao…and see how the Hmong stacked up: most depressed.
How does this loss affect their adjustment to America? DON'T TOUCH A NEWBORN MOUSE. She lives in New York City. Who was responsible for Lia's fate? It also made me sympathize with the difficulties of the immigrant experience, especially for those who settle in a place so different from their homeland. How did they affect the Hmong's transition to the United States? They expected that it would last ten minutes or so, and then she would get up and begin to play again. Anne Fadiman writes about the clash of two cultures: Hmong and Western medicine. The Lees at one point acceded that they would be willing to use a combination of therapies both from their culture and their recently adopted culture, but would the physicians have complied to it as well? They sign a court order transferring Lia back to MCMC for supportive care, with the option of being released to their care, if Neil authorizes it. We later changed the name, because sometimes we just end up drinking). Perhaps she would never have gotten septicemia, causing her to go into shock and then seizure. For a variety of reasons (both spiritual and practical), the Lees did not follow the treatment plan, and Lia didn't receive the specific care her doctors ordered.
In 1979, the Lees' infant son died of starvation. What Hmong would risk that? Many Hmong taboos were broken; Lia had her entire blood supply removed twice, though many Hmong believe taking blood can be fatal, and she was given a spinal tap, which they think can cripple a patient in both this and future lives. They gave her an enormous amount of medicine, and finally she stopped seizing. Her sympathies lie with the Lees, and perhaps rightly so; yet she isn't quite willing to extend the same empathy or generosity of viewpoint to others she comes across. Get help and learn more about the design. Their use of welfare or social indices like crime, child abuse, illegitimacy, and divorce, all of which were especially low for the Hmong? There's much background about the Hmong people going back centuries and recent history also. ISBN-13: 9780374533403. In reality, an army of Hmong guerrilla fighters were recruited, trained, and armed by the CIA in the 1960s to fight against communist forces in Laos. And so no rating — because I don't think I can possibly assign "stars" to something that felt like a gut punch to the soul. Neil tells the family Lia needs to be moved to Valley Children's Hospital for special treatment. With the help of their English-speaking nephew, Neil tried to communicate what was happening to Foua and Nao Kao.
Fadiman isn't out to piss people off. When Lia Lee Entered the American medical system, diagnosed as an epileptic, her story became a tragic case history of cultural miscommunication.