On Aug 15, 10:56 am, zhen
googlemail.com> wrote:>> In my clinical experience, it is not an easy task to convey to our
>> people that high blood pressure is the major risk factor for stroke
>> and coronary heart disease (heart attack), and is a major contributor
>> to chronic heart failure (CHF), kidney disease and death. It is even
>> harder to convince them that they need to modify their life style,
>> change their diet, loose the excess weight, do more exercise, do not
>> smoke, do not drink excessively, having a more balance life (including
>> spiritual life) AND that many will need to be on medication today and
>> the for the rest of their life for the simple reason that it will
>> PREVENT damage to their bodies in the the years to come (especially
>> heart disease, heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, blindness and
>> death).
>
> how many hmong patients do you deal with? are most your patients
> ethnic hmong?
>
> i deal with a lot of hmong patients too, and in the beginning, it
> seemed very difficult just to communicate or express a health concept
> from western medicine to a hmong worldview. even the hmong medical
> dictionaries i have did not help much.
>
> btw, thaum hmoob hais tias, "kuv phob phob vog", what are the possible
> western medical diagnosis of this symptom? i've seen diagnosis ranging
> from heart, kidney, bladder, diet, etc... including "tim dab" tib si.
There are under 1000 Hmong in my town - and I saw most of the older
folks. Hypertension and diabetes are the two main conditions that are
difficult to manage. I remember telling one patient about 15 years
ago with hypertension and kidney problem that if he did not follow the
treatment strictly as prescribe, his kidneys would pack up after 5
years and he had to be on dialysis - an sure enough, he did not care
much about his condition and 5 years later... he had to go on
dialysis... and that person is still on dialysis! - each time he see
me, his tear just pouring down... "txom nye ua luab li lod...",
regretting that he should have listen to me... if he listen, much of
the complications would have been prevented and he may not need to be
dialysis as yet.
Another patient with high blood pressure and diabetes as well... but
that person did not stick to any regime of treatment... so I keep
pumping to that patient that he is sitting on a time bomb and it is
matter of time that he would have a stroke or die... but he just
said,... "nhyias muaj nyias hmoov!". That may be right as you just
cannot predict when a person's time is up... any way, this patient
ended up with a massive stroke but survived ... but soon he had a
second stroke and died.
So, it is hard to know whether it is that person's "hmoov" to live
only that long or that his death and misery (his misery and the family
misery) could have been prevented.
All I want to say is that we need to do all that lies within our power
to prevent those health complications (that we know for certain that
will follow if nothing is done)... and then we can leave the rest to
'pheej nyias txoj hmoo".
As for "phob vog" can be caused by any of the things you mentioned...
but not too sure abut "tim dab".
