This paragraph from The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Ann Fadiman (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997; ISBN 0 374 52564 1) describes the drugs taken by Lia Lee, a Hmong child with severe epilepsy. Her parents came from the mountains of Laos to California, and Fadiman's book describes the mutual incomprehension of the healthcare workers in California and Lia's family. For more information on the book read Editor's Choice.

By the time she was four and a half, Lia's parents had been told to give her, at various times, Tylenol, ampicillin, amoxicillin, Dilantin, phenobarbital, erythromycin, Ceclor, Tegretol, Benadryl, Pediazole, Vi-Daylin Multivitamins with Iron, Alupent, Depakene, and Valium. Because these medications were prescribed in varying combinations, varying amounts, and varying numbers of times a day, the prescriptions changed twenty-three times in less than four years. Some of the drugs, such as vitamins and anticonvulsants, were supposed to be given every day no matter how Lia was feeling, and when they ran out, her parents were supposed to renew the prescriptions; some, such as antibiotics, were supposed to be given for a specific period of time, and though they were prescribed only when Lia displayed certain symptoms, the prescriptions were to be finished (but not renewed) even if those symptoms disappeared; antifebrile medications, prescribed in the hope of warding off fever-triggered seizures before they happened, were supposed to be administered only if Lia had a temperature, a plan that might have worked better if her parents had been able to read a thermometer. Several of the medications were available in different forms, and were sometimes prescribed as elixirs (all of which were pink or red and came in round bottles) and sometimes as tablets (almost all of which were white and came in round bottles). Foua and Nao Kao, of course, had no idea what the labels said. Even if a relative or the hospital janitor was on hand to translate when a bottle was handed to the Lees, they had no way of writing down the instructions, since they are illiterate in Hmong as well as English; and because the prescriptions changed so frequently, they often forgot what the doctors told them. Measuring the correct doses posed additional problems. Liquids were difficult because the Lees could not read the markings on medicine droppers or measuring spoons. Pills were often no easier. At one point, when Lia was two, she was supposed to be taking four different medications in tablet form twice a day, but because each of the pills contained an adult dose, her parents were supposed to cut each of the tablets into fraction's; and because Lia disliked swallowing the pills, each of those fractions had to be pulverized with a spoon and mixed with food. If she then ate less than a full helping of the adulterated food, there was no way to know how much medicine she had actually consumed.