The Spirit Catches You and You Fall: A Hmong Girl, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures is a biographical book written by Anne Fadiman and published in 1997. The book is about the conflicts that arise when a Hmong family sends their daughter Lia to Merced Community Medical Center (MCMC) for treatment of her epilepsy. Unable to understand the customs and culture of Hmong society, tensions increase between modern doctors and traditional Hmong parents. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The first time Lia got sick was when her older sister, Yer, slammed a door and moments later, Lia's eyes rolled; his arms shot above his head and then he passed out. Lia's parents, the Lees, recognized her symptoms as qaug dab peg, meaning a spirit captures your soul and you fall. The spirit is referred to as a dab. A dab is a malevolent soul-stealing spirit. Then, due to the frightening sound of the door slamming, Lia's soul has escaped from her body and is now lost. When a Hmong dies, his soul becomes a wandering soul; a wandering soul is a soul that must travel from place to place, retracing the path of its life, until it reaches the burial place of the placental robe, and puts it on. However, if the soul cannot find its jacket, it is condemned to an eternity of wandering, naked and alone. In Hmong-English dictionaries, qaug dab peg is generally translated as epilepsy. Qaug dab peg is a well-known disease in Hmong society and is recognized as a serious and potentially dangerous condition. A Merced congressman named Tony Coelho from 1979 to 1989 is a popular Hmong figure known to have epilepsy. A few years ago, some local Hmong men were quite concerned when they learned that Coelho was suffering from qaug dab peg. So the Hmong men enlisted the services of a shaman, known as a txiv neeb, to perform a ceremony that would recover Coelho's wandering soul. Hmong epileptics often become shamans because their seizures are believed to be proof that they have the power to see things that other people cannot. As well as facilitating their entry into trance, a prerequisite for their journeys into the realm of the invisible. The fact that they have been ill themselves allows them to sympathize with the suffering of others, thus giving them credibility as healers. Becoming a txiv neeb, or a person with a healing spirit, is not a choice, it is a calling. The call is obtained when a person becomes ill, with qaug dab peg or another disease whose symptoms include chills and pain. Therefore, when a person shows these symptoms, they are chosen to be the host of a healing spirit. It is an offer that the patient cannot refuse. But there are some Hmong who have chosen to reject the offer. Shamanism is a strenuous vocation that requires years of training with a master to learn all the ritual techniques and chants. A txiv neeb achieves enormous social status in the Hmong community as they are considered people of high moral character. Unlike a biomedical doctor, doctors study for years to earn a medical degree to have credibility. In the coming years, the authority will be given to a doctor as part of the hospital system. By the time the Lees brought their daughter Lia to MCMC, Lia had stopped having seizures. The Lees had no way to explain to the doctor what happened to Lia due to their lack of medical knowledge and, more importantly, the language barrier. Although usually there is an interpreter who worked as a janitor in the hospital, but this time he wasn't there. Lia showed chest symptomscongested and coughing when the resident ordered a chest x-ray for Lia, the radiologist said Lia had an early case of bronchopneumonia or tracheobronchitis. The resident had no way of knowing that bronchial congestion was caused by aspiration or entry of saliva or vomit into the lungs during the seizure. Lia was discharged with a prescription for an antibiotic. When Lia lived with her adoptive family Dee Korda, she was on prescribed anticonvulsant treatment, however, she still suffered from seizures, more so than when she lived with her parents. Lia's doctor, Peggy Philp, prescribed Lia a series of medications at different times that stop Grand Mal seizures, but they didn't work and at one of those times Lia had a seizure triggered by fever. Doctors had concluded that Lia would not be able to live more than a few years due to her ongoing cycle of seizures, however she had lived much longer than they expected. Every time Lia had a seizure and came to the emergency room, her two doctors Neil Ernest and Peggy Philp were called no matter how late it was. Doctors would prescribe the medicines and explain to parents how they are taken. However, Lia always got sick soon after; since the parents had no way of understanding due to the language barrier and even if it was translated for them by the caretaker or a relative of Lee, the parents had no way of writing down the directions because they were both illiterate. Furthermore, Lia's parents usually do not give her the medicines prescribed by doctors. They believe that Western medicine is bad and would make their daughter even sicker. MCMC doctors and nurses usually don't like to treat patients from Hmong society due to the language barrier and cultural differences. They dislike Hmong patients to the point that doctors sarcastically say that the preferred treatment method for Hmong patients is high-velocity transcortical lead therapy, which means the patient should be hit in the head. Hmong behavior and cultural beliefs put a strain on hospital staff. For example, nurses become stressed and anxious when a Hmong woman doesn't make any sounds during labor. Many taboos of Hmong medicine have been problematic, some of which are very important in helping diagnose a patient's health problem; such as blood tests, spinal taps, surgeries, anesthesia and autopsies. This causes frustration for medical staff as these are the only methods learned and needed to help patients recover. So when Hmong patients refuse whatever treatment their doctors prescribe, doctors become annoyed because they have no other way to help Hmong people other than what they learned in medical school. An incident occurred when resident Dr. Benny Douglas had a patient who was an elderly Hmong woman with gastric cancer and was unable to get her children to consent to her surgery, this led resident Dr. Benny Douglas to develop severe insomnia due to frustrations. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Western medicine is unfavorable in Hmong culture and society, because for the Hmong, American doctors do things very differently from what they saw their shaman the “txiv neeb” do. For example, the txiv neeb is considered polite, does not ask personal questions and knows how to treat the patient's body as well as soul. As for American doctors, they are considered rude because they ask intimate questions about the patient's life and when a doctor treats 24, 2012.