Analysis Of The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down By Anne Fadiman

In a healthcare setting you will see different cultures that will come and go. It is very important to know how to deal with each culture so that you can help them while still making sure they are comfortable. Native Americans have many different characteristics because of the different tribes from all over the world. Healthcare providers should be familiar with them so they know how to distinguish them if needed. While knowing their characteristics they should also know how to interact with Native Americans as well since their culture is a lot different than ours, we want to make sure that we don’t disrespect them.

Lia’s parents spoke the Hmong language, which was a barrier during the treatment of Lia Lee. During the hospital stay at Merced County Medical Center, the doctors tried to explain the procedure of her treatment and provided the medications to cure Lia’s epilepsy. But since Lia’s parents had language barrier, the doctors and Lia’s parents were confused on the medications of what is supposed to be given for the betterment of Lia Lee. They even tried to send a nurse to their home to help with the medication regime. They soon realized that her parents did not want to give the medications to Lia.

‘The spirit catches you and you fall down’ was published in 2012 by essayist and reporter Anne Fadiman. This introductory book review analyzes the way in which different cultures perceive illnesses and diseases. It focuses on the story of the Lees a Hmong family, who moved to the United States and experiences difficulties with language, culture and biomedicine method of healing, which contradict to Hmong’s way of healing. The chapters describe the differences between the ways childbirth is conducted in Hmong society compared to the western society. As well as the struggle the Lees family has with the cultural differences in diagnoses and treatment of their ill daughter.

This book proved that in the end, neither way of thinking was completely wrong or completely right. Both the medical community and the Lees should have sought out ways in which they were able to better come to an agreement. For instance, the medical community could have tried to find a translator for the Lees which could have helped them both determine proper medical procedures. They also could have decided to learn more about the Hmong culture to have some understanding of where the Lees were coming from and avoid any barriers for them to better treat Lia. A big drawback that the medical community made was having a pessimistic outlook to Lia’s critical condition.

“The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” by Anna Fadiman tells the story of Lia Lee, a Hmong child with epilepsy, whose life could have been different if only her family was caught up in western medicine. This book reveals the tragic struggles between a doctor and patient because of lack of communication. When Lia was around three months old, her older sister Yer accidentally slammed a door and Lia had suddenly fallen into the floor. This is the first recorded time that Lia was experiencing an epileptic shock.

As Fadiman wrote, “Doctors on the late shift in the emergency room had no way of taking a patient’s medical history, or of asking such questions as Where do you hurt?” (25). The fact that Lia’s parents could not understand English contributed to her not getting better since the doctors assumed that they would give her the medications as prescribed which they did not. A quote of Fadiman that says it all, “Over time, her drug regime became so complicated and underwent so many revisions that keeping track of it would have been a monumental task for a family that could read English. For the Lees, it proved to be utterly confounding” (45).

Foua and Nao Kao had no way of knowing that Dan had diagnosed it as epilepsy, the most common of all neurological disorders. Each had accurately noted the same symptoms, but Dan would have been surprised to hear that they were caused by soul loss, and Lia's parents would have been surprised to hear that they were caused by an electrochemical storm inside their daughter's head that had been stirred up by the misfiring of aberrant brain cells” ( Fadiman 28). The Hmong strongly believed that Lia’s seizures were related to spirits. On the other hand, the doctors believed that Lia’s seizures were a result of a malfunction of the body and the only way to cure Lia was through medications.

Several chapters in this book are devoted to Hmong’s history, cosmology and the multiple challenges they have faced while trying to settle in the United States. According to Fox (2005), Western medicine is a more reliable and effective way of curing diseases as compared to the traditional, and old-fashioned cultural methods, such as sacrificing pigs and chicken as depicted by the Hmong Lee family. I think that a better and more profound understanding of diverse cultures and their beliefs will play a key role in enabling Western doctors to overcome cultural resistance towards science. Consequently, they will have a more cooperative attitude towards the patients, which will likely change the ancient beliefs as held by some patients. Besides, the societies should not fully trust the cultural healing modalities.

Family and group solidarity are important to the Hmong, yet they were forced to split apart during their journey to America. The Hmong also partook in ceremonies, dances, and sacrifices that were important to them and their religion, however, the doctors and other people were wary of these practices and didn’t condone them, especially when it came to patients such as Lia Lee. Lee’s doctors were constantly giving her shots, medicine, and feeding her through tubes. Her parents didn’t approve of this at all and thought that the medicines they were giving her was what was killing her.

Screams of anguish, the smell of burning flesh, corpses lining the crimson soil—these are only a few of the horrors one would face as a Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp at the time of the Holocaust. Eliezer Wiesel, author of the memoir Night, has witnessed all of this, at the young age of 15. Over the course of the catastrophe, Eliezer shows drastic signs of spiritual change before, during, and after being held prisoner at the camps of death. Prior to the incident, Elie’s faith in his God was very strong. He describes bringing his needs to his father as, “One day I asked my father to find me a master who could guide me in my studies of Kabbalah,” (page 4).

Within the Hmong culture there is great emphasis on symmetry, balance, and complementary sections in bodies, society, and cosmos. Additionally, the soul must be kept in balance to maintain good health; sadly, the soul of Lia was not kept in good health which lead to severe, poorly-treated epilepsy. The medical mistakes and lack of precise communication ultimately lead to an untimely death of Lia; however, between both parties dealing with Lia’s epilepsy, the severity of her illness could have been prevented if both parties took Eliade’s perspective on sacred space into account during treatment. Sacred space, in terms of Eliade’s perspective, is one of the most critical, cherished topics that defines his paradigmatic model for religion. The

The different ways one can look at Paja’s illness is by acknowledging the Hmong culture and by looking at the perspective of the biomedical world.

Over the progression of the book the view points and relationships between the Lees and the doctors develops slightly. The medical staff was not prepared with a translator or a cultural understanding of the Hmong and how their beliefs would not match up with their medical practices. “Not only do the Hmong fail resoundingly to improve the payer mix- more than eighty percent are on Medi-Cal- but they have proved even more costly than other indigent patients, because they generally require more time and attention, and because there are so many of them that MCMC has to hire bilingual staff members to mediate between patients and providers” (Fadiman 25). This theme in the story was immensely eye opening for all of the cultural gaps that exist throughout the United States. The solution to this problem is for both sides standing on opposite sides of the gap to take the time to bridge the gap together.

According to Purnell (2014) “Hmong children often have not developed a vocabulary that can fully interpret medical terms” (pg. 238) and should be

In Anne Fadiman’s book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, two cultures clash with each other in the struggle to save Lia Lee, a Hmong child refugee with severe epilepsy. Although Lee and her family live in the United States, and thus receive medical care from Westerners, her family believes that Lee’s condition is sacred and special. The following miscommunications, both culturally and lingually, between the American doctors and the Lee family leave Lia Lee in comatose at the end of the book. However, Lia Lee could have been saved if the Lee’s had a better understanding of the American doctors’ intentions, and the American doctors understood the Hmong culture. Essentially, the tragedy of Lia Lee can be attributed to the clash of American and Hmong cultures at both the surface and sub-surface level.