Yong and I are at the doctor’s office. She has had some worrying symptoms lately. Indeed, the fact that we are here is some indication of the severity of the problem. The Chinese medical model does not dictate running to the doctor’s office at the first sign of a cough or occurrence of a broken fingernail. Instead there exists a list of foods you should or shouldn’t eat depending upon your specific condition as well as a host of concoctions to ingest to assist in the healing process.
If Yong at the doctor’s office is one surprise, I am soon treated to a second one. In response to the doctor’s questioning about the onset and progression of the symptoms, Yong declares that she has already taken a dose of levofloxacin, an antibiotic.
The doctor’s mouth drops open. She looks at Yong like a librarian at a patron who has just started talking in something besides a hushed tone, like a policeman staring at someone he’s just pulled over who informs him she did not know ‘red’ meant ‘stop’. Like you look at someone who has just violated one of the fundamental rules of the social order: you don’t speak in a normal tone at the library, you don’t run red lights at will, and you don’t just start yourself on a dose of antibiotics.
The doctor is not especially thrilled with me either, since the antibiotics were ones I was recently given for some overseas travel. But it is to Yong her wrath is directed and she begins to lecture her on the dangers of the activity she has just undertaken. Beyond the threat that antibiotic overuse poses to society, the doctor informs Yong that because she has ingested an antibiotic any diagnostic tests will be of limited value. The doctor continues her lecture. Antibiotics are dangerous, she warns. You can’t just take them like candy. I see Yong nodding her head the way she has nodded her head at me when we have had similar conversations about Western medicine, and I know this means that nothing is getting through.
In one sense, I admire Yong’s disregard of the doctor’s advice. Western culture in general and Americans in particular tend to ascribe to doctors an almost god-like status and remunerate them accordingly. In much of the rest of the world, and certainly in the culture of China, this is not the case. Doctors are respected and admired. But divinity is not accorded to them, nor is their pay the astronomical, off-the-charts, mind bending salary most doctors in America receive. As a result, the cost of medical services in China is dramatically less.
Because of her opinion of doctors, Yong views their treatment regimens less like commands from a mountain top and more like suggestions from a friend. A well-intentioned and admittedly well-informed friend. But not a friend who possesses any secret insight or special training that qualifies them to be the final word on a subject. She is as likely to follow the advice as not.
And this is where the problem arises. On the one hand, I want her to receive the best treatment possible. For me, this means she should follow the advice of the best trained doctors in the world, doctors who graduate from top-ranked medical schools, who did internships at world renowned hospitals, and who are accredited by the appropriate bodies. On the other hand, I also respect her autonomy, the ultimate control she has over the decisions impacting her body. So what to do when her view of medicine says to let the body take its course and the view I ascribe to says to take the physician recommended treatment?
I suspect this conflict--the conflict that can arise from differing views of medicine--is an issue that interculturally mixed marriages confront in a higher proportion than marriages within a culture. Unless the marriage involves one member being an Amish or a Christian Scientist (and these groups tend pretty much to intermarry), an American husband and wife will have no compunction about following their doctors’ advice.
From Marcus Welby MD to House, Americans have been fed a constant diet television shows espousing physicians’ diagnostic brilliance, technical mastery, and near God-like command over life and death. When this isn’t the case, when an intercultural couple disagree about this issue, it can be as consequential as the problems that arise for Western couples who have different religious views and or discordant political orientations.
Unfortunately, I have to end it here because I don’t have any solutions to propose. The moral of the story—if there is any--is that in an intercultural marriage there are some issues you can see coming—like where to live and what to eat—and some—like this one—that will catch you by surprise. In any case, if there is one thing an intercultural marriage is not, it is this: it is not predictable.
