The Hmong tradition is a sort of celebration but in the twelfth month. It is an especially important holiday to the Hmong, and they even sew new clothes for the day. If seen in old things, it could bring poverty to the family. They also thought this was a particularly crucial time to banish dabs, among other things. Lia’s illness affected this day heavily. The family did not have any of the usual celebrations because of the sadness of the situation.
Code x is an abduction kind of code. Every hospital has different codes for different things. Code blue is universal in that someone is coding. Code silver could be a possible hostile situation. Code pink is child abduction which would be closest to this situation. The father stole his own child because they were, in his culture, sending the dab closer to Lia by saying how she was going to die. Everyone saying this over and over causes extreme concern and stress for the family. At that point, to the father, the nurses and doctors were killing his child and all medical interventions that were associated were causing harm.
This code X situation is another example of how having some cultural competence is important. These situations would not be happening if they would just take the time to understand. Also, I respect the family’s decision not to assimilate to our country because they came here to escape forced assimilation. They wanted to keep the Hmong culture alive and to do that, they felt they could not learn ours because it would cloud over theirs.
This book has been eye opening on the different situations. Saying one thing could mean something quite different to another culture. These nurses were not wishing death upon the child, but they knew it was inevitable due to the damage caused. It was also stated that there was typically no interpreter, which is a cause for the confusion that occurs when Foua did not understand the instructions but signed the paper either way because she wanted her child home. The parents remained very non-trusting of the government to not take their daughter. As the book says Lia became a perfect veggie. The last chapter of this group went over why the Hmong chose Merced, what the schooling of their children looked like, and multiple Hmong of important value.
Chapter 13 of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down talks about Lia’s family processing the information that she is brain dead. Foua and Nao Kao came to the hospital with many herbs and oils commonly used in Hmong culture to bring health back to Lia. The Hmong New Year actually fell on this time frame where Lia was in the hospital. This new year is a time where Hmong banishes any dabs and calls upon dead ancestors and spirits to help with whatever they are going through at the time. They also typically dress in beautiful clothing and garments, but instead Lia was dressed in funeral attire, since everyone was certain that she was going to die. After some time in the hospital, Nao Kao demanded that the IV’s be removed from Lia’s body; he and Foua believed that all the medications being pumped into her was making her sick. There was a miscommunication where Nao Kao felt that by signing her discharge paperwork, that he was signing her life away to die in two hours. This resulted in a security breach, as he tried to take her body and run out of the hospital. Eventually when Lia came home, they washed her body after believing that she had died at the hospital.
Chapter 14 covers a lot more about Hmong culture and history. It also goes on to explain things about the Lee family and how they acted when they first moved to the United States in 1980. The Lee’s were unaware of things such as electricity and packaged food. At one point they were even worried about using a stove in case it exploded. As time went on and they got more accustomed to Western lifestyles, the Lee family became more comfortable with modern appliances and other previously foreign concepts. Despite their use of these things, the family still only speaks Hmong, and only practices Hmong culture. There is a common class of migrants called “Americanization” which is frowned upon by many Hmong living in Laos and Thailand.
Chapter 15 shows us what happened two years later after Lia returned home from the hospital where she was originally pronounced brain dead. The doctors were certain that she was going to die, but just days after she was released, Lia was breathing normally, and her fever had gone away. Nao Kao and Foua became model caregivers to the hospital staff, who once believed that they were only going to make her condition worse. Over time Lia was no longer obese or considered epileptic; however, a public health nurse continued to call and check in on her periodically.
Finally, in chapter 16 we learn a lot about why the author picked a lot of specific elements to include in her book. To start, she learned a lot about Merced, California, when she went to visit and learned that one out of every six residents was Hmong. A lot of Hmong refugees resided in California after following a man named Dang Moua, who paid them $3.00 an hour to work long days. There was not enough work for them however, and they could not get more high-end jobs since they could not speak English. A sizable portion of the Californian population did not like the Hmong and treated them with disrespect and hostility. There were a lot of cultural differences that many did not want to accept and treated the Hmong poorly because of it. Fadiman did countless research on the Hmong culture to accurately depict their cultures and beliefs.