Epilepsy Case Study Essay

The Lee family are Hmong immigrants from Thailand living in California. Their interaction with American Physicians began when their daughter Lia had an attack of epilepsy and was quickly taken to Merced’s County Hospital for treatment. Given the fact that Merced’s hospital did not have professional Hmong interpreters to translate medical procedures, physicians relied on janitors and nurse’s aide who spoke Hmong. As a result, Lia was misdiagnosed many times before a diagnosis of epilepsy was confirmed. In addition to the communication barriers, the Hmong’s belief that epilepsy was “evidence that they have the power to perceive things other people cannot see, as well as facilitating their entry into trances, a prerequisite for their journeys
All the family members, except for Jackie and her two young children, suffer or have died from a serious medical condition. Jackie’s “husband’s kidney failed before he was thirty, her alcoholic father had a stroke because of uncontrolled high blood pressure at forty-eight, her aunt Nancy, who helped her grandmother raise her, died from kidney failure complicated by cirrhosis when she was forty-three. Diabetes took her grandmother’s leg, and blinded her great-aunt Eldora, who lives down the block” (Abraham 1994). In addition to their illness was their lack of financial resources, and medical coverage that made it impossible for them to seek preventative care.
The Banes and Lee families have similar socioeconomic status that contributed to their lack of healthcare. Both families did not understand how serious their condition was because the medical staff did not communicate effectively, and as a result they suffered late stage diagnosis. The institutions where they received their care was in their neighborhood, but it was public, overcrowded and understaffed. Epilepsy among the Hmong became a normal way of living as did chronic disease in the Banes family. And finally, their cultures viewed the medical establishment in a negative