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Summary Of The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down By Annie Fadiman

1144 Words5 Pages

The spirit catches you and you fall down by Annie Fadiman is a story about Hmong girl named Lia Lee, who is epileptic. Lia Lee suffered from seizures and eventually becomes vegetative for the rest of her life. The story is about a series of episodes of miscommunication, misinterpretations, disagreements between Lia’s parents and the medical team who is treating her. According to the Hmong culture they referred to the condition as the “quag dag peg,” which means the spirit catches you and you fall down (Fadiman, 2012). It first happened when Lia Lee’s elder sister slammed Lia with the door, which caused Lia to have a shocking reaction by jerking and frightening a “dab” (spirit) away (Fadiman, 2012). Lia’s parents were not planning to take her to the hospital first because they …show more content…

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. So, Lia was getting the wrong dosage of medications or not even getting medications. The doctors wanted to check her blood to know whether the medications were actually helping her or not. But they have realized that Lia’s mother has been lying or confused about how she administered the medications to her throughout this time (Guerrero et al, 2002). The next time Lia had a grand mal seizure; her parents blamed it on all the medications that were prescribed to

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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.

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