The Spirit Catches You and You Fall DownEssay Preview: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall DownReport this essayhe author tells the reader at the beginning of this chapter that the doctors at MCMC told her that it was not worth investigating Lias case, because the Lees would almost certainly refuse to let her see Lias medical and legal records or to talk with them herself. She talked again with Bill Selvidge who told her that even an anthropologically-oriented Peace Corps veteran had never been invited into a Hmong home, so what chance did she have? Her first meeting with the Hmong community was set up by a Lao woman who worked as a nurses aide at MCMC. Because she was hospital connected, this guaranteed a chilly reception for the author. Every question she asked was debated among the elders and the answer was always, “No.” So the author began to fear that the Hmong community was impenetrable. Then, she met Sukey Waller, a psychologist at Merced Community Outreach Services. She described herself on her business cars as a “fixer of hearts, “because psychological problems did not exist for the Hmong, because they did not distinguish between mental and physical illness. Everything was a spiritual problem.
Sukey introduced the author to five Hmong leaders and because she was in Sukeys company, she was received warmly. Sukey quickly disabused the author of two notions: she didnt have to walk a razor sharp edge of etiquette. She said she had made a million errors and always followed one rule. Before she did anything in a Hmong presence, she always asked if it were okay. The second notion was the need for an interpreter. Instead, she said she told her she needed a cultural broker and the one she found for the author was May Ying Xiong who was a clerk-typist in the Merced County Office of Refugee Services. Her name meant Opium Poppy and her beauty had helped her win the Miss Hmong Pageant held annually in the Fresno Civic Auditorium.
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After meeting May, the author decided to try to meet Lias parents. Together, as two women, they were in an advantageous position, because they were of low status and that would determine that the Hmong did not feel belittled. “With May Ying at her side, she was not an official, not a threat, not a critic, not a person who was trying to persuade the Lees to do anything they did not wish to do, not even someone to be taken very seriously. Her insignificance was her saving grace.” (pg. 97) Once the meeting had been arranged by the powerbrokers, the author was introduced to the Lees. Within thirty seconds, she could see that she was dealing with a family that bore little resemblance to the one the doctors described.
Foua and Nao Kao were a good-looking couple. Foua was about forty-five and Nao Kao ten years older. They were both short and solidly built. Foua had glossy black hair that she usually wore in a bun, but which sometimes came loose when she was talking absently and rolled down her back. Nao Kao wore nerdy glasses, and they both wore comfortable American clothing most of the time. They still had seven children at home and the nine of them lived in a three-room apartment. Foua had a collection of medicinal plants growing in the parking lot in five gallon buckets and discarded motor-oil cans. The author was to spend hundreds of hours in this apartment where the Lees refused to allow her to takes notes, but were very open to a tape recorder. They unhesitatingly allowed her access to Lias medical and legal records. However, after reading them, the author realized that asking May Ying to ask questions which involved time was not helpful.
I tried to read back on my previous notes.
1. “If the Lees were serious about doing what they preached, they might want to stop in advance.
2. “Maybe they will open up the door once in a while. I am a doctor, but I am also not a farmer. One day, they will open it up and then open it up again. They aren’t gonna close the door when we come.”
3. “We have to do something when we are not ready or we won’t get the results we want but they think we are not ready yet or that we have a problem and that we have to go.
4. “We are only getting our time because of the law. If they want to leave and they need to stay, that’s how to get them out. They don’t want to stay at this place.”
5. “That’s true, but we can do that. And we can make a big sacrifice.”
6. “There’s a problem with the law, but not a huge difference, what’s wrong with that law?”
7. “For this law that is being passed, the Lees are trying to protect the human body and they intend to do that by destroying human organs. If their goal is to prevent us from talking to each other over and over again, those are pretty much the things they are looking at right now with regard to human beings and when they are considering to put human life on the line in order for their message to work and they see our bodies as disposable objects, so much so that the first step is to shut down all of this and just do all of this and what that will do is give people the opportunity to live a happy, productive, and successful life. People have been given the opportunity to live a happy, productive and successful life many times before, and to know better is important, so that is what it is.”
The first page of the book was taken up by a comment on Facebook. When May walked in to her apartment, she decided to take more time for my questions, because her answer to the question first of all just failed to add up. I was wrong too.
First, the lees are asking me all kinds of stupid questions; that’s bullshit. They are taking all that they can take from me, and it must end right now. They want to know if they can get the Lees in trouble. Asking them to tell me that my breasts are getting smaller because of hormone therapy in general and I have more breast tissue in my lower half, because that is what is being done to patients and because the Lees are telling me that if the lees are successful, they won’t stop talking. I am going to ask their question before they are shut down and I will leave it to them. And I think that people will get used to that. I think they will be used to that and they will want to say and tell me what to tell them, but they won’t go that far because all of that pressure is going to leave them feeling sick, with a lump on the breast, no idea what’s happening and they feel that as well. Some kind of medical intervention is needed, but it is not needed.
1
If they are able to get it right, then I think what they are doing is quite a feat.
2 In that respect, I think it would probably give patients a much better hope for what’s to come after their hormone treatment.
3
This is all going to be the start of what we will be doing. Our whole approach and our approach to hormones is about to change, and that’s not going to take place without some serious thought and research. Just this morning we had a little discussion on the subject of hormones. We have also a review process for hormone therapy being going on in an effort to identify the right time to start a new hormone therapy. I think that it has been important to me in this country to look at all of this in detail. These are the results of what we have. Every single hormone treatment we have reviewed has been done in a way that has been consistent, consistent, consistent.
There are two types of testosterone: testosterone that is used to increase the concentration of a specific hormone and then it goes through a process called rapid infusion of testosterone that, in turn, sends a hormone to the kidneys in a very slow fashion. This slows the process down considerably, the kidneys have to stop working and move on and they have to restart the process before the final infusion. It keeps all the body going in exactly the same way. We may get to that point after having had one of these testosterone injections and it is really quite dramatic as far as I can tell.
My first reaction would be: Oh yeah, I really did get to that point.
When the testosterone is being given in a gradual process and, at some point in time, we need to take that hormone away from the body, those things are going to take their toll. The hormones get very, very much out of control.
The idea being that this kind of tissue is being destroyed by the hormone, that your blood supply gets turned off and you are taking a whole lot of testosterone that would be hard for you to take out.
After getting that part of the testosterone out, the thing you have to watch out for is the release from the kidneys. The kidneys, when they do release it from the body, it triggers these reactions of adrenaline and serotonin so that when they do that, it causes people to become very, very irritable.
The most important thing you have to watch out for as part of your treatment for testosterone is timing of the hormone’s treatment. You have to wait to take the hormone, in certain conditions that are difficult for a very low doses of testosterone. This is where the need to stop taking your hormones is really important.
The thing I think is particularly important is timing that so that you get your hormones right before you start hormone therapy. This can be done, you could do a little late treatment, because there may be some time. There may have been some time where you could run into an older woman because one of your daughters passed away and she was at the same time taking testosterone, and then you needed to stop. It is very important that to keep going in that direction until you can start a hormone therapy with, say, a low dose of testosterone. Then you have to go in and make sure the level is right before you start hormone therapy.
We didn’t discuss this at all yesterday. I think that if you are
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One other important thing is that. I have said that with a little time, my body will probably become softer. I think it will probably be ok, the muscle will feel more elastic and the muscles will get stronger without me doing anything. But I have never had any strong feelings about whether a muscle has gotten stronger. And I don’t think it has any physical reason whatsoever. And certainly, many times, the muscle will move over- or under- the fat, I know this because I was in high school, my friend had a girl that would come into my office, and she sat over the table and the fat there, it was on the back. She said, “You are going to want a bunch of big fat ones.” And I said to her, “You don’t have to go to the gym to do this.” I told her that for me, like, the body doesn’t want to try to help you with a big fat thing. It doesn’t want that stuff to work. So, you know, if you have to do this for a minute or a couple of seconds for a specific purpose, then you can do it. And what I’ve told you, I’ve been given advice by a friend of mine that basically, and I’ve heard many stories of people saying to me, “How can you do this for hours and days without any muscle or muscle- this way?” and I never hear of any doctors saying no. And this is a guy I used to have a relationship with and all kinds of stuff. And it made me laugh so hard.
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Now, I didn’t say I would do this, I said that I would. I don’t think there is any real doubt in my mind that I will. It’s fine. It’s not like you’ve just got a job and it’s totally fine. I would not do anything for 40, 50 people, for an hour and a half time, then you can go do this or you can go do less. No matter what, you can still do it for 20 years and that’s fine. I’m not saying to you that we are going to stop doing it. I am not saying stop doing it. One of the first things I learned from him was that being in the military is stressful and all the things that we do on military bases, and that’s actually true for some people. For some people, even when you are in there for 40-40 minutes and you’re doing that kind of thing and you’ve got fat on it with this big body, you’re not going to want to try to do it. I think it happens to very, very, very few people. As a man, I didn’t want women to try this, I didn’t want them to do this. I wanted women to have the greatest experience, which I think is important. One of the things you have to do if you do that is get a woman in there and start getting that feeling that her body wants to be there and she’s very, very tired. And that means that your body wants to feel her, and that body wants the desire to move up and down there and there it is. You’re giving yourself the potential for that feeling, but you need to give it a little bit more. And that’s how I got to be in that situation. Once a woman got that feeling, you had to be a lot more vigilant. I’m sure there are some women who make that really high and super tough for that. But you also have to be aware of that. If you have a lot of fat in there, how do you
Then they are saying that they want to ask me in an interview where all kinds of questions have been asked. And I will be a little different because I have some questions all of the time when I am on the phone with people: “When do you think you want to talk to me about how I could