The spirit catches you and you fall down

Part A

Please help me by answering these two questions. They are questions from the book “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures,” by Anne Fadiman. Both questions answers should be well thought out, complete sentences and paragraphs. Contains proper grammar and spelling. Includes examples and/or references to reading. Word count 300 for each question. Includes proper citations in APA format. Make sure to use examples. Should show evidence of having done the reading, by putting down page numbers. More broadly, it would be interesting to include your reaction to the book. Would you recommend it to others? Why or why not? Is there anything you learned from this case that is applicable to you outside of the classroom?

1. How does the greatest of all Hmong folktales, the story of how Shee Yee fought with nine evil dab brothers (p. 170), reflect the life and culture of the Hmong?

2. What did you learn from this book, would you assign blame for Lia’s tragedy? If so, to whom? What do you think Anne Fadiman feels about this question?

Part B

Respond to the two paragraphs. Expand on the main theme, contains proper spelling and grammar. Responses to other students must be substantive. The responses can be close to 250 words.

A substantive post is one that shows use of your critical thinking skills. It builds on the conversation. Use the following guidelines:

1. Ensure that the posting contributes to the overall discussion thread that is being developed. Your response must contain some reference back to the original discussion question. This will help you stay on track.

2. Try to use your posting to add value to the discussion. This is more effective than simply responding to meet a requirement.

3. Check to see that the posting expands on the main theme (in the discussion question, or assignment posting).

Paragraph 1

#17 What does Dan Murphy mean by, “When you fail one Hmong patient, you fail the whole community” (p.253).

Doctors have very high expectations to cure patients of illnesses and when they cannot fulfill that expectation others who witness this failure become skeptical about choosing to go to a Doctor for help again. Those who are affected by the unfulfilled treatment will share the news with their family and friends cautioning them to think twice about going to the Doctor for help. Dan Murphy’s statement in the text is implying that the Hmong community is such a close-knit community that if one Hmong patient is failed then the rest of the community is failed because the rest of the community will not put their trust in the Doctor(s) again. Failure to treat or cure a Hmong patient ruins the relationship between the community and the Doctor. “Who knew how many Hmong families were giving the hospital a wide berth because they didn’t want their children to end up like the second-youngest Lee daughter?” (Fadiman, 1998, p. 253). Furthermore, the unpleasant experiences, Lia and her family had with the Pediatric Doctors, lead to the development of prejudices about the medical profession and towards the MCMC program. Prejudices were also developed by the medical community about the Hmong tribe (Fadiman, 1998, p. 253). I think that the Doctors feel disheartened when they fail not only a single patient but an entire cultural community. I believe it is most if not all Doctors’ goal to do whatever it takes to cure and fully treat a patient. And while it may be severely frustrating and difficult to live with that failure, it is also hard for medical professionals to be looked down upon and viewed as useless and impractical, especially if their goal is to help care for the whole community. With the Hmong community feeling overlooked in their cultural practices the medical facilities will not be able to gain cooperation or support from the Hmong tribe. When May broke her arm, Nao Kao bathed her arm in herbs and then proceeded to wrap her broken arm in a poultice (Fadiman, 1998, p. 253). After just a week, May’s arm was fully healed and contrarily did not need a cast like the Doctors at MCMC suggested. I think that the Doctors and the Hmong tribe should have put up a united front and worked together to develop new treatments together without being biased against each other’s different methods of healing.

Paragraph 2

#7 How do you feel about Lees’ refusal to give Lia her medicine? Can you understand their motivation? Do you sympathize with it ?

The lees’ not giving Lia her medicine can easily been seen a reckless by child protective services, and local governments but they were doing what they thought was best for their child. I empathize with the Lee family because they cared about their youngest daughter more than anything in the world. She was precious, and they were just trying to protect one of their own. But I would be just as frustrated as the physicians and nurses. Nothing boils my blood more then seeing non compliancy, however, understanding their culture a bit more I began seeing their was an enormous gap knowledge and translations. There are no words that are similar in Hmong that translate over. am able to understand and sympathize with their decision. Their daughter Lia, was their fourteenth child. She was the first of their children to be born at a hospital, and was a healthy infant, appropriate for gestational age, despite not knowing how far along she was due to no prenatal care. The Hmong believe that illness can be caused by a variety of sources—including eating the wrong food, being affected by a change in the weather, and neglecting to make offerings to one’s ancestors, being punished for one’s ancestors’ transgressions, being cursed, pointing one’s finger at the full moon, touching a newborn mouse, killing a large snake, or having bird droppings fall on one’s head. But by far the most common cause of illness is soul loss. A life-soul can become separated from its body through anger, grief, fear, curiosity or wanderlust. The life-souls of newborn babies are especially prone to disappearance because they are so small and vulnerable. They believe that babies souls may wander away, drawn by bright colors, sweet sounds, or fragrant sells; or they may leave if a baby is sad and lonely, or not being loved by its parents, or frightened away by a sudden loud noise. When Lia was about three months old, her older sister, Yer, slammed the front door of the Lee’s apartment. A few moments later, Lia’s eyes rolled up, her arms jerked over her head and she fainted. The Lee’s had little doubt what happened, the noise of the door had been so profoundly frightening that her soul had fled her body and become lost. They recognized the resulting symptoms as quag dab peg, which means “the spirit catches you and you fall down” The spirit referred to in this phrase is a soul-staling dab, peg means to catch our hit; and quag means to fall over with one’s roots still in the ground. The Hmong considered qaug dab peg to be an illness of some distinction. Their seizures are thought to be evidence that they have the power to perceive things other people cannot see, as well as facilitating their entry into trances, a prerequisite for their journeys into the realm of the unseen. Lia’s parents would have been surprised to hear that, according to the doctors, they were caused by an electrochemical storm inside their daughter’s head that had been stirred up by the misfiring of aberrant brain cells. Western medicine equates quag dab peg with epilepsy. In the Hmong tradition, epilepsy is an illness of honor. Because so few are afflicted, the Hmong reasoned that the soul in concern was special. In fact, most Hmong who have epilepsy are revered as txiv neebs (shaman). In light of this traditional belief, the Lees were only mildly concerned following Lia’s first episode. . Hospitals are regarded not as places of healing but as chanel houses. They were populated by the spirits of people who had died here, a lonesome and rapacious crew who were eager to swell their own ranks. The Lees complained of feelings of frustration, as well as being misunderstood and blaming the doctors for intervening in ways that appeared to make Lia sicker instead of better. They had prescribed multiple drugs in different doses because that was what they deemed necessary. It is possible that if her prescriptions were not changed as much, her parents might have been more likely to give her them, since they would have been less confused and more confident that the doctors knew what they were doing. However, that regimen wasn’t working because the parents found it too confusing and hard to follow. When Lia’s mother did give her the prescribed dose of medications at home, Lia was drowsy and did not act right, resulting in her mother to stop giving it to her. While in the hospital, her father, Nao Kao demanded that the hospital stop giving Lia medications because, in his opinion, they were killing her. He did not see her death as inevitable. I myself can relate to this situation because I come from a family where we do not rely on medicine and all my life I was taught that if I am Ill my body would heal on it’s own