Suffering propels people to change. This change has both the power to heal and the power to destroy. Sometimes, even “affliction has its gifts” giving a seriously ill patient and caretaker potential to bring them closer to one another or create a divide too deep for reconciliation. It may sound absurd that a disease can be a “gift”, but problems cause us to redirect ourselves and focus on the present. Times of crisis changes the way we think about ourselves and about others. A disease can be a “gift” because it teaches us valuable lessons we would never have learned without it. In the literary works Tuesdays with Morrie and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, the sickly patients in both stories profoundly influence themselves, their families, …show more content…
In The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, a Hmong family and American doctors constantly collide due to their two very different cultures which result in Lia’s medical issues. Lia Lee is a Hmong child who was diagnosed with severe epilepsy. Her parents wanted to treat her using Hmong traditions while her American doctors wanted to treat her the biomedical way. Both sides fail to understand one another. Neil and Peggy are innately good doctors because they help disadvantaged families like the Lees, but their ignorance towards the Hmong culture gave them obstacles in providing the best care for Lia. Neil and Peggy could not tell “how much of their inability to get through was caused by what they perceived as defects of intelligence or moral character, and how much was caused by cultural barriers” (Fadiman 47). The communication barrier caused the Lees to not take care of Lia the way the doctors had instructed them to. Due to the cultural divide, the Lee’s were noncompliant to Lia’s extensive medicine regime. Lia seized more frequently because her body did not have the right amount of medication. The doctors at MCMD “found the situation particularly tragic because they considered it preventable” (Fadiman 55). Not only did the doctors hard work “not receive a single word of thanks… [they were] greeted with resentment” (Fadiman 57). Lia’s disease frustrated the doctors because they could not treat her the way they wanted. Lia’s situation did not alleviate the frustration the Lees had either. The doctors’ reasoning “only strengthened the parents’ opposition. [Nao Kao and Foua] said if the doctor drew any more blood against their will, they would both commit suicide” (Fadiman 51). The Lees were very apparent in their distrust with the American medical system. They did not want their daughter to be tied up to machinery and given a mountain of medication. Even after Lia returned from foster care, the
Almost doctors and physicians in the world have worked at a hospital, so they must know many patients’ circumstances. They have to do many medical treatments when the patients come to the emergency room. It looks like horror films with many torture scenes, and the patients have to pay for their pains. The doctors have to give the decisions for every circumstance, so they are very stressful. They just want to die instead of suffering those medical treatments. In that time, the patients’ family just believes in the doctors and tells them to do whatever they can, but the doctors just do something that 's possible. Almost patients have died after that expensive medical treatments, but the doctors still do those medical procedures. That doctors did not have enough confidence to tell the truth to the patients’ families. Other doctors have more confidence, so they explain the health condition to the patients’ families. One time, the author could not save his patient, and the patient had found another doctor to help her. That doctor decided to cut her legs, but the patient still died in fourteen days
This quote centers Henrietta Lacks’ story around the same questions that have driven the Doctoring course: What does it mean to care for others? And how do we ensure that we care for our patients first as people, rather than as a disease? In many ways, Henrietta Lacks’ story is a textbook case in how not to be a good physician. In examining and learning from her story through the lens of Doctoring, we can inform our own practice and
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is a nonfiction book that brings to light the clash of Hmong culture and Western medicine in Merced, California. Anne Fadiman tells the story of a Hmong immigrant family, the Lees, and the unfortunate condition of epilepsy that their daughter Lia suffers from. Throughout the book the reader sees great conflict inflicted on medical practitioners due to the Lee’s own cultural beliefs and the frustration suffered by the family due to miscommunication. Anne develops the story by giving a detailed background of the Hmong peoples’ lifestyle in their indigenous land of Lao, how it contributes to their beliefs, and their struggle to understand and accept Western practices.
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Union between two quarrelsome objects can be the most amazing creation in certain situations, take for instance, water. Originally, water was just hydroxide and hydrogen ions, but together these two molecules formed a crucial source of survival for most walks of life. That is how marriage can feel, it is the start of a union that without this union the world would not be the same. A Hmong mother, Foua took it upon herself to perform a marriage ceremony for the author of “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down”, Anne Fadiman. In this miniscule event, two cultures with completely conflicting ideas came together to form a union. In this union, an American was celebrating an event in a Hmong way, truly a collision of two cultures.
Though Lia’s parents and her doctors wanted the best for her, the above barriers were creating a hindrance to her treatment. They both were not understanding each other and the interpreter was also not there, doctors wanted to transfer her to another best hospital because they were not getting with her disease but her parents misunderstood the situation and thought they were shifting her for their own benefit. In expansion to these convictions, Hmong likewise have numerous traditions and folks that are negotiated by those of the American standard and therapeutic groups; for instance, some Hmong customarily perform custom creature sacrifice and in view of extremely particular entombment customs and the alarm of every human's numerous souls potentially getting away from, the accepted Hmong convictions don't consider anybody experiencing obtrusive restorative surgery. The Hmong medicinal framework is dependent upon nature-based hypothesis that lets life stream as it may be, while the western restorative framework is dependent upon the modernized humanism-based medicinal science. So when Lia was dealt with by the American specialist with western pharmaceutical, Lia's guardians don't concur with them....
Perhaps the greatest problem faced throughout this tale was that of miscommunication. The Merced Community Medical Center or MCMC for short was the place where Lia was being treated. This hospital was the Merced county's only hospital and unlike most rural county hospital it is state of the art, ."..42,000-square foot wing ... that houses coronary care, intensive care, and transitional care units; 154 medical and surgical beds...."3 This was a teaching hospital made up of interns mostly, but also with some great doctors like Peggy Philp and Neil Ernst. Peggy and Neil are married and have children. They graduated together at the top of their class, and have created quite a practice for themselves. Although MCMC is a great rural hospital, it also has the same problems as most rural hospitals do which is the health care crunch, where most of the money goes to the urban hospitals and then the leftover money is spread among th...
All informants and sources are listed according to the chapters in which they contributed. Her major helpers, such as her interpreter, the Lees, the doctors who treated Lia, and a few others, have a special thanks from the author at the beginning of this section. Fadiman consulted a vast array of sources from both perspectives of Lia’s story. She also read nearly all of the available literature about the Hmong at that time, which admittedly was not abundant compared to now. Overall, those she spoke to seemed to be open and willing to talk about what had happened. The doctors freely admitted mistakes they made or may have made, and showed an interest in learning where they went wrong so that they could avoid any future
What would it be like to come to a country and not understand anything about its health care system? To many this would be a very daunting task. Unfortunately, this is the scenario that the Lee family has to deal with in the book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. The Lee family, and the other thousands of Hmong immigrants, try to understand and navigate the complex and sometimes confusing health care system of the United States. As the book points out, the values and ideals of the Hmong culture and the United States health care system are not always the same and sometimes come into great conflict with each other. Lia Lee was unfortunately the person stuck in the middle of this great conflict.
Within this critical analysis, I hope to show that the lack of communication and compromise between the Hmong family and the American doctors, was the defining blow to Lia’s ill health. I hope to do this by addressing the following three main points of interest in relation to this miscommunication; the views held by the American healthcare professions on the causes of Lia’s illness, contrasted with the opinions of Lia’s parents. I will then discuss the health-seeking strategies of Lia’s parents and how they were influenced by different resou...
Suffering is apart of life, just like joy and love is. We can never choose how life treats us but we can always choose how we react and get back up again. Through Fever 1793 we see up close and personal how suffering can affect us, and how sometimes it can affect us in positive ways. How suffering can help turn the page to the next chapter in our lives. How suffering doesn’t always mean losing but also gaining.
This essay will be evaluating the question: how did language and communication play a role in shaping what happened to Lia? Also, it will look at if Fadiman points out ways in which communication practices between doctors and patients could be improved. These were important in the book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, because they shaped what would happen to Lia in the end. The evidence we will look at will include the facts that the doctors and the Lees couldn’t understand each other, the hospitals didn’t have enough interpreters for everyone, and that the Lees did not trust hospitals or doctors in the first place because of their culture.
Within the story, it was stated many times that if Lia’s parents could not give her the care she needs and follow directions given by the doctors then she would be removed and put into a foster home. Later on, Lia was moved into a foster home in which she received what the doctors thought was the proper medical treatment, while Foua and Nao Kao were still fighting to get Lia back, because they did not know the medication procedure and after they did, they realized a decreases in Lia’s awareness, so discontinued the medications. This fits the unusual and not normal experience of a story because most people understand and can follow directions they were given. But cultural differences led the Lee family to believe that the amount of drugs being put into a small childs system was taking over her body and would make her worse than she already
Like many medical dramas, Vincent Lam’s collection of short stories in Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures allows the reader to explore the extraordinary world of the medical profession. In the short story “How to Get into Medical School, Part One” Lam explores some of the more intimate aspects of a medical student’s life through the portrayal of Ming and Fitzgerald, two characters with similar aspirations, although immensely diverse mindsets. After completing their Molecular Biology Final, Ming and Fitzgerald proceed to have lunch together at the Thai-Laotian Café, a very public location. Throughout “How to Get into Medical School, Part One” it is revealed to the reader that although Ming and Fitzgerald both share similar aspirations in pursuing a career as a doctor, their mindsets regarding more intimate issue differ greatly, and this is revealed through Ming’s constant reiteration that she will not allow any personal feelings to get in the way of her medical education. This idea
One of my most memorable experiences in Asia was my trip to the doctor. I knew that my slight fever and scratchy throat could be contributed to lack of sleep. With a twelve-hour time difference, I had the worst jet lag that was possible. Yet, the Secretariat felt that I should go to the doctor, so off I went. Once we arrived I took one look at the building and decided that I felt much better. The office was a hole in the wall that practiced family medicine and surgery. It was in stark contrast to the gigantic, pristine medical facilities I was used to. There was a very long line to see the doctor so I took a seat next to a hacking baby and an anxious young mother. What happened next was the most distressing part of my adventure. Once my chaperone announced that I was part of the school program, the doctor took me right away. As I followed the nurse back I passed by people who had been sitting there for much longer. There was a man with b...