The barrier between cultures is immense in this story and Lia's medical treatment was adversely affected in large part due to miscommunication and language barrier.
Full Answer
What happened to Lia Lee?
Lia is the first Lee child born in an American hospital; her mother, Foua, delivered Lia’s thirteen brothers and sisters while standing over the dirt floor of their home in Laos. Three months after Lia is born in Merced Community Medical Center (MCMC), she begins having violent seizures.
What caused Lia’s condition?
That cultural divide — despite the best intentions of both sides, Ms. Fadiman wrote — may have brought about Lia’s condition, a consequence of a catastrophic seizure when she was 4. Over the years, whenever Ms. Fadiman lectured about the book, readers would press a single question on her before any other: “Is Lia still alive?”
What can we learn from Lia’s story?
As a result, Lia’s story, as few other narratives have done, has had a significant effect on the ways in which American medicine is practiced across cultures, and on the training of doctors.
Did Lia's doctors like the Hmong?
In Fadiman's opinion, Lia's doctors, Neil Ernst and Peggy Philp, liked the Hmong, but they didn't love them. It may have been this lack of love that hindered them from considering their patients' points of view and adjusting their methods accordingly.
What were the Lees beliefs about Lia's illness?
The Lees were no different than any other Hmong in their attitude toward Lia's illness - a mixture of concern and pride. The Hmong are exceptionally well known for the gentleness with which they treat their children. They consider them as the most treasured possession a person can have.
What do the Lees believe is the cause of the seizures Lia suffers from?
Lia's own family believed her seizures were caused by her soul leaving her body, which could be returned to her via animal sacrifice. Throughout the book, we see Lia's Hmong family constantly questioning the doctor's intention as the doctors uselessly battle against the family's inability to carry out instructions.
How did the Lees View Lia's epilepsy?
How did the Lees view Lia's epilepsy? They were concerned for her health but also proud, as epileptics are often chosen to be shamans and can see things others cannot.
How does the Hmong culture view epilepsy?
The Hmong name of epilepsy is qaug dab peg, which translates to "the spirit catches you and you fall down*" illuminates the Hmong belief that those who are epileptic are gifted with the ability to enter the spirit realm.
What did the Lee's Do in honor of Lia returning home in Chapter Nine?
As a result of Lia's condition, the Lees stepped up her traditional medicine. The doctors at MCMC would have been surprised to learn that the Hmong actually took their children's health seriously since they so readily spurned American care. They spent large amounts of their money on such things as amulets.
What happened to Lia Lee Hmong?
Ms. Lee — who in July celebrated her 30th birthday in that bed, surrounded by her mother, brother, seven sisters and numerous nieces, nephews and cousins — died Aug. 31 after a lifelong battle against epilepsy, cerebral palsy, pneumonia and sepsis, a toxic reaction to constant infection.
What difficulties does the Merced medical Center face treating the Hmong community and Lia specifically?
What were problems with the way Lia's parents were treated in the Merced hospital? - failure to work within the traditional Hmong hierarchy of male/elders making decisions lead to confusion because information was being relayed to people that could not act on it.
How many seizures did Lia Lee have?
All this baffled Lia's doctors. “I felt that I was trying to penetrate a very dense wall — a cultural wall — and didn't have the tools to do it,” Dr. Ernst said. The seizures worsened; by the time Lia was 4 ½, she had made more than 100 outpatient visits to medical facilities and been admitted to the hospital 17 times.
What is the main theme of the book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down?
Objective: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is a critically acclaimed book describing the importance of understanding cultural influence on health care and health outcomes.
How does the Hmong culture perceive illness and healthcare?
Cultural Perceptions of Health and Illness The Hmong's religious and traditional views are rooted in animistic beliefs that all objects, places and creatures have distinct spiritual ties. The concept of illness as the loss of an individual's soul encourages the Hmong to use shamanistic rituals to restore one's health.
What are the Hmong people's beliefs?
The Hmong are animist, people who believe in souls or spirits, in their practice of religion. The Hmong believe that the spiritual world coexist with the physical world. The spirit world consists of many types of spirits that influences the human life.
What happened to the girl in The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down?
Lia Lee lived in a persistent vegetative state for 26 years. She died in Sacramento, California, on August 31, 2012, at the age of 30. At that age she weighed 47 pounds (21 kg) and was 4 feet 7 inches (1.40 m) tall; many children with severe brain damage have limited growth as they age.
What is Lia Lee's medical case?
Lia ’s medical case challenged the Merced hospital by presenting difficult... (full context) Chapter 1: Birth. Lia Lee was not born in the highlands of northwest Laos, where twelve of her older... (full context) Lia was the first Lee child born in America.
What chapter does Fadiman describe Lia's life?
Chapter 18: The Life or the Soul. Fadiman considers whether or not Lia ’s life would have been better if she had been treated by somebody like Arthur Kleinman... (full context) Chapter 19: The Sacrifice. Fadiman describes a healing ceremony for Lia that she attended at the Lees’ apartment in Merced.
What chapter does Foua give birth to?
Foua gave birth to her in Merced... (full context) Chapter 3: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Three months after her healthy birth, Lia went into a seizure after her older sister Yer loudly slammed the apartment door. Foua... (full context) ...Jeanine Hilt, a social worker who worked closely with the Lees, once said, ...
Is the Hmong vantage harmful?
What’s more, if they continue to press their patients to comply with a regimen that, from the Hmong vantage, is potentially harmful, they may find themselves, to their horror, running up against that stubborn strain in the Hmong character which for thousands of years has preferred death to surrender.
Why did the Lees not give Lia her medication?
The Lees did not always give Lia her medication, Ms. Fadiman wrote, because they did not want to interfere with qaug dab peg entirely. To encourage her soul’s return, her parents gave her herbs and amulets.
What caused Lia Lee to die?
The immediate cause was pneumonia, Ms. Fadiman said. But Lia’s underlying medical issues were more complex still, for she had lived the last 26 of her 30 years in a persistent vegetative state. Today, most people in that condition die within three to five years. Image. Lia Lee in 1988. Credit... Anne Fadiman.
Why did Lia have no seizures?
Lia no longer had seizures, because she now had vastly reduced electrical activity in her cerebral cortex, the brain’s outermost layer. She grew only slightly, as is typical of children with severe brain damage: by the age of 30, she was 4 feet 7 inches and weighed 47 pounds.
When did Anne Fadiman meet Lia Lee?
In 1988 , when Anne Fadiman met Lia Lee, then 5, for the first time, she wrote down her impressions in four spare lines that now read like found poetry: barefoot mother gently rocking silent child. diaper, sweater, strings around wrist. like a baby, but she’s so big. mother kisses and strokes her.
Where was Lia Lee born?
The 14th of 15 children born to her mother, Foua Yang, and her father, Nao Kao Lee, Lia Lee was born on July 19, 1982, in Merced, Calif. — the first of her parents’ children born in the United States, and the first born in a hospital. She was plump, porcelain-skinned, lively and beautiful.
Where did the Lees live?
In the United States, the Lees eventually settled in a modest apartment in Merced, about 120 miles southeast of San Francisco. By the time Ms. Fadiman met them, Merced’s population was one-sixth Hmong. Image. The book is required reading at the Yale School of Medicine.
Who is Lia's father?
Nao Kao Lee, Lia’s father, died in 2003. Besides her mother, Foua Yang, and her sister Mai, her survivors include a brother, Cheng, and six other sisters, Chong, Zoua, May, Yer, True and Pang. In Merced and far beyond, Lia’s legacy is pervasive.