In the book “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” by Anne Fadiman, achild named Lia Lee is taken away from her parents by Child Protective Servicesand placed in foster care. Because they aren’t giving her medication forepilepsy. Although resulting in some medical benefits those benefits were lostbecause of destructive psychological and emotional damage to Lia.
Dr. Neil Ernstdecided to call child protective services when Lia Lee’s parents Nou Kou andFoua were reluctant to give her her medicine. Dr. Neil Ernst said: “I felt itwas important for these Hmongs to understand that there were certain elements ofmedicine that we understood better than they did and that there were certainrules they had to follow with their kids’ lives. I wanted the word to get outin the community that if they deviated from that, it was not acceptablebehavior.
“(pg. 79 Fadiman). Dr. Ernst could have also been arrested for notreporting it. There were some alternatives to calling Child Protective Servicessuch as my favorite one; having a nurse visit the Lees’ three times daily toadminister the medications, but this thought did not occur to Dr.
Ernst and/orseemed unreasonable at the time. Although Fadiman does not mention what Dr. Ernst thought about this course of action, I can only suspect that it would havebeen too expensive to have a nurse visit three times a day. Also theyshouldn’t be rewarded for their noncompliance by having someone elseadminister their daughter’s medication.
It might have also provoked theLees’ to anger because they didn’t like to give Lia the medicine because ofhow the medicine made her depressed and sullen. After Lia was taken away for aperiod of a few weeks, Nou Kou almost beat an interpreter named Sue Xiong whowas interpreting for a CPS (#) social worker. Nou Kou said: “I was outside andSue came inside and she called me and said, Come in here, you come in here. Atthat time I was ready to hit Sue, and I got a baseball bat right there. Myson-in-law was with me, and he grabbed me and told me not to do it. “(pg.
91Fadiman), so you can see the Lees’ were violent natured. The second reason theNou Kou and Foua did not want to give their daughter the medicine was that theybelieved like other Hmongs that people with epilepsy are caught by a good or badspirit which makes them fall to the ground (the Hmong word for epilepsytranslates into: the spirit catches you and you fall down) and while their undersiege they get messages from the gods. Many people in their culture withepilepsy become cultural healers or shamans. The plan of sending a nurse wouldhave been my plan. It would have been allot of time and money though.
And whenthe Hmong community is already draining our resources through welfare doesn’tmake much sense to spend more money on them. It also would not have said that”our medicine is better” as good either. Although Dr. Neil’s plan ofletting CPS handle it worked out for him it did not work out for Lia for she hadmore seizures at her foster home with the medicine than at home with missed andhalf dosses. The reason is because she did not want to be separated from herparents, and the emotional damage from the separation. Some people would say itwas selfish and lazy that Dr.
Ernst did not at least try to use a nurse toadminister the medication. I believe if I was Him that I would try sending anurse for Two weeks to see if it would work and then make a decision. But on theother hand I believe that these stubborn, ignorant people shouldn’t bepampered when they are already helping themselves to so much (#) from the taxpayers through welfare. Because of these two issues of Dr. Ernst’s quicknessto make a decision, and the Hmong community taking so much and giving nothingback, it is hard for me to make a decision and I feel myself “slipping”towards Dr.
Ernst’s decision. I don’t blame Dr. Ernst for his decision whichI think is the most logical choice and even if he tried my Two weeks idea itstill wouldn’t make sending a nurse any less expensive. All I am saying isthat he should not have worried about teaching the Hmong community a lesson onreality so much and think more about the health of the individual named Lia Lee. The Hmongs believe that to treat the body you must also treat the soul, whathappened here is that Lia’s soul got hurt so she didn’t get better at all,nor much worse.
That is why I think the medicine didn’t work effectively. Itis unfortunate that cultural misunderstanding and language barriers got in theway of what could have been resolved much more easily. BibliographyFadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. New York: TheNoonday Press, 1997
