Both the culture of the Hmong patient and her family and the culture of biomedicine are equally powerful. Understanding Western medical culture and its specific set of interests, emotions, and biases is important if we are going to deal successfully with someone else's culture. We will finish up this module by comparing the differences between the Western medicine and Hmong cultural perspectives of Lia Lee's illness.
For each of the six events below, there are two interpretations: the Western medicine interpretation and the Hmong cultural perspective.
| Event | Western medicine interpretation | Hmong cultural perspective |
|---|
| Lia Lee has a seizure. | Lia needs anticonvulsant medicines to prevent further seizures. | Lia has qaug dab peg (the spirit catches you, and you fall down) and she is recognized by her parents to be a special child. |
| Lia fails to respond to treatment. | Refusal to give prescribed medicine makes parents non-compliant and indicates that the parents are not acting in the best interest of their child. | Concern that the treatment is not working and is producing undesirable side effects is a good reason to stop a medication. When Western medicine doesn't work, traditional treatments are necessary. Traditional treatments are also often compromised by Western medicines. |
| Lia is removed from her home. | Better for the child to be in a place where she can receive her medications appropriately than at home with parents who are noncompliant with the anticonvulsant regimen. | It is a terrible shock and a great insult to have their precious child removed from their care, especially when they have been taking all possible appropriate measures to treat their daughter's illness. |
| Lia's parents sacrifice a cow to boost Lia's health and spend $1,000 to purchase amulets filled with sacred herbs from Thailand. | Animal sacrifice and un-proven herbal remedies are inappropriate and not effective for treatment of serious illness. | Spiritual treatments involving the soul are often required in treating qaug dab peg. |
| Doctors tell Lia's parents that she will die soon. | When an illness is serious, it is important to level with parents and present the facts. | It is never good to be too specific about death. It makes evil spirits stronger and can bring on death sooner. |
| Doctors perform a spinal tap on Lia (without the Lee's consent). | A spinal tap is a procedure with minimal complications and is often necessary to provide appropriate care for a patient. | Procedures that drain precious body fluids are inadvisable and can make an illness much worse. |
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