Section Two: Chapters 5-8

Chapters 5-8:

  • In the second section of the book, the reader meets Neil and Peggy, married pediatricians who are incredibly hard working and see the light at the end of the tunnel with Lia’s case. They both work exceptionally hard and continually go the extra mile for the Lee family. They organized public health workers and interpreters to go to the Lee household to better understand if and how the Lee’s were giving Lia her medications. Unfortunately, it became known that the Lees believed that the medications and their side effects were altering Lia’s spirit, and, thus, they ceased giving her the medication for long periods of time. Lia had several severe episodes of seizure and Peggy and Neil made the difficult decision to remove Lia from her parents care for some time. The foster situation was somewhat positive and the Lees became good friends with the foster family. Often, the Lee children would even join Lia in her new home for sleepovers and playdates. 

  • Chapter 7 touches on a very interesting topic on the ‘doctor side’. Neil, one of Lia’s aforementioned doctors, believed in giving the same quality of care to each and every patient. This would be fine tuning a drug regimen to produce the best results. However, in Lia’s case, this proved to be somewhat detrimental. The constant changing of doses and medications scared the Lee family and gave them more reason to not give Lia her drugs. 

  • Jeanine Hilt worked hard with the family to make them comfortable with giving medication to Lia so that they might not lose their daughter to the foster care system for good. Ultimately, Lia returned home after the family showed that they could properly administer the drugs during several overnight visits.

  • This section of the book also details how Anne Fadiman was able to get close with the Hmong community and learn so much about their culture. Fadiman discovered that the Lees wanted her to learn about their culture so that they could help explain to Doctors what they believed and why. In a particularly poignant digression, Fadiman recounts the time that Foua claimed she was stupid in America. In reality, none of the skills she had developed over a lifetime in Laos were able to translate to the United States.