You should give Lia medicine to take for a week but no longer. After she is well, she should stop taking the medicine. You should not treat her by taking her blood or fluid from her backbone. Lia should also be treated at home with our Hmong medicines and by sacrificing pigs and chickens. We hope Lia will be healthy, but we are not sure we want her to stop shaking forever because it makes her noble in our culture, and when she grows up she might be a shaman. 

-Fadiman (1997:260)

        In all societies, people experience illness and live with their disabilities in communities; even when they access the health care system, it is a human service system. Lia, a Hmong child with a seizure disorder, and her family understand and confront her seizure disorder with a set of attitudes and   beliefs that stand in opposition to the dominant medical culture in the United States where her family now resides. These social forces, from the ethnic group to the medical context to the larger society, shape the recognition and response to problems. Too often, we have neglected to consider that what makes people's experience in the community and in treatment systems "success" or "failure" are intimately tied to the kinds of relationships forged and maintained in those contexts.