Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down Book Report

The book, Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, is a true story narrative on the life of Lia Lee. Lia Lee was a child who was born in the 1980s in Merced, California. She was a Hmong child who was epileptic. Epilepsy is a brain disorder in which a person has repeated seizures (convulsions) over time. Seizures are episodes of disturbed brain activity that cause changes in attention or behavior. Lia suffered from severe grand mal seizures since the age of three months. When the first seizure occurred, her parents admitted her into the hospital, only to get misdirected information from a resident. Her parents could not comprehend what they were being told due to their language barrier.
Overtime, the seizure kept on recurring and she was readmitted

into the hospital. Her parents believed in a different way of curing her, which tied in with Hmong culture. They refused to give her certain medications. Her doctors at the time saw this as neglect and placed Lia in foster care for about one year. This did not help any collaboration with the doctors and her parents, this made the parents distrust the doctors even more then in the beginning of this process. Days and months passed by, as Lia got worse. While at the hospital, she suffered the “The Big One.” “The Big One” (1986- four years old) was the seizure that changed her life and almost resulted in death. Doctors believed that she would surely die shortly after. She remained alive with no brain function and was transported to another medical facility. Lia’s brain impairment was never resolved and she was taken home with her parents, where she lived until the age of thirty.
Throughout the whole book, the mood was strictly stress and frustration between both sides. It was a constant tug of war between Eastern culture and Western medicine. Unlike doctors, Hmong religion is not based on scientific experience so; doctors would have not understood why they would refuse medical help. The culture aspect runs deeper than any outsider could imagine. For most easterners, culture is a huge part of their daily lifestyles, whether it involves prayer, rituals, or fasting. Culture is customs and beliefs that people practice.
Practice involves believing and living out each second of life in those beliefs.

It would have been really hard for Lia’s parents to over look their culture. Hmong culture allowed them to belief in seeking human souls through a shaman. Shamans were used to help with the “pulling” out of the spirit. For example, epilepsy was referred to as the spirit that caught her… and the Shaman was here to help the spirit escape and allow her to fall down (be relieved of her issues). The Shaman would try and communicate with the certain internal spirit. He performed rituals to “egg it on.” In the Hmong religion everything was nature-based. On the other hand, Western medicine revolves around science. Doctors look and are taught to look at science as the “the truth that could be proven.” Westerners usually confine themselves to medications and surgery during sickness. These are two extremely opposite point of views on how a patient should or can be healed. Western Doctors would treat epilepsy by drug therapy. They would prescribe the patient with the appropriate dosages of anti-convulsant drugs. Another option could be surgery but most patients do not require this procedure. The surgery is performed to treat partial activity, which involves only treating certain areas of the brain. One could see how spiritual culture and science could contradict in this

story.
How could one fix this problem if it were to occur again? There are no right answers. It all depends on the patient and the doctor. Some doctors wouldn’t have respected the families’ culture and would have done everything in their power to cure the patient. This cannot be taught or lectured, how to really handle a complex problem like this. Doctors should be aware that there are cultural religions that don’t intake medical procedures. How each doctor reacts should be individualized.
“Neil and Peggy were not the kind of doctors who practice veterinary medicine. Instead, they were the kind of doctors that believe in their profession and truly want to help other people. The end result was that they provided high quality care equally to all of their patients. Once it became apparent that the language barrier prevented proper dispensing of Lia's medication, they were faced with a conundrum. They had prescribed multiple drugs in different doses because that was what they deemed necessary. However, that regimen wasn't working because the parents found it too confusing.” (Fadiman, Ch7) One can’t be taught to interpret Hmong religion in medical school. Each case would definitely be a case-by-case situation. There should be no protocol that says don’t treat patients “like this” because a doctors profession comes with an oath to save and ensure health. This is what Lia Lee’s doctor tried to do. Lia Lee did live until she was thirty, which was unseen and very remarkable.