Mai Neng Moua , 31

“My father died when I was three years old in Laos in 1976. Unlike other widows her age [she was 26 years old], my mother did not run off and remarry. She stayed with my paternal grandparents and took care of my two brothers and me. She has been both Mom and Dad to us. Ever since my father’s death, she has been on her own. From leaving our village in Laos to crossing the Mekong River to living in the refugee camps to surviving the American social service system, she has done it all on her own. I grew up with her teaching me to be strong and to rely on myself.
The summer after my junior year in college [1994], I was getting a physical exam, and the doctor said, ‘You have unusually high blood pressure for someone your age.’ I didn’t know anything about high blood pressure so I didn’t think anything of it. After the physical, I went out and played. I didn’t get home until midnight. The doctor had been calling my house all day.

When I called him back, he said, ‘You need to come to the emergency room right away.’ I asked why and he told me that my kidneys were really sick. However, it felt as if he had said, ‘You’re going to die!’ It was some doctor I did not know. I was offended. What right did he have to say this to me? When my mom and I went to the emergency room, the doctors would not let me leave. They found out that my kidneys were not filtering out all the toxins. My kidney function was still at 12% so I did not need dialysis yet.

By the end of that summer of 1994, however, my kidneys were functioning less than 10%. I decided to do a biopsy, which was a procedure where the doctors took a little bit of tissue out of both kidneys to examine. The doctors told me that both of my kidneys showed signs of scarring and had shriveled up. I had to do dialysis. This decision started a whole series of discussions and arguments with my family about Hmong herbal medicine, Western medicine vs. herbal medicine, and peritoneal dialysis vs. hemodialysis. It increased the separation from my family who had not wanted me to even do the biopsy, let alone dialysis.

I looked them in the eyes and said, ‘I am sick. What do I do? Tell me. If I don’t do this [dialysis] then what do I do?’

‘Come home and do herbal medicine first,’ they said. I felt that we were past the herbal medicine stage. It was endstage renal disease, after all. I could really die if I did not do something. We argued. My uncles were mad.

‘If you don’t listen to what we’re saying, why are we here?’ they asked.

I was mad. I said, ‘I don’t know. Why are you here?’

When I made the decision to do dialysis, my uncles believed I had drawn my lines. To me, it seemed like they were saying, ‘Since you won’t listen to us, and you’re doing what you want to do, we can’t be responsible for you. Whatever happens after this point is up to you. You’re on your own now.’ It was my body that was sick. I would die if I did not do something. I decided to make the decisions that could save my life. I did the things that I felt I could live with, literally.

My family loved me, but they did not know what to do to save me. None of them stepped up to the plate, not even my brothers. They were so afraid.
You only need one kidney to live, but they thought they could die if they donated a kidney. I wondered why, if they could, they would not do something in order to save someone they loved.”

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Excerpt from Mai Neng's, written by Mai Neng Moua, photographed by Kou Vang