"Napalm victim seeks relief from four decades of pain" by Jennifer Kay Associated Press October 24, 2015
MIAMI — In the photograph that would win the Pulitzer Prize and made Kim Phuc a living symbol of the Vietnam War, her burns aren’t visible — only her agony as she runs wailing toward the camera, her arms flung away from her body, naked because she has ripped off her burning clothes.
More than 40 years later she can hide the scars beneath long sleeves, but a single tear down her otherwise radiant face betrays the pain she has endured since that errant napalm strike in 1972.
Now she has a new chance to heal — a prospect she once thought possible only in a life after death.
Late last month, Phuc, 52, began a series of laser treatments that her doctor, Jill Waibel of the Miami Dermatology and Laser Institute, says will smooth and soften the pale, thick scar tissue that ripples from her left hand up her arm, up her neck to her hairline, and down almost all of her back.
Even more important to Phuc, Waibel says, the treatments will relieve the deep aches and pains that plague her.
With Phuc are her husband, Bui Huy Toan, and another man who has been part of her life since she was 9 years old: Los Angeles-based Associated Press photojournalist Nick Ut.
‘‘He’s the beginning and the end,’’ Phuc says of the man she calls ‘‘Uncle Ut.’’ “He took my picture and now he’ll be here with me with this new journey, new chapter.’’
It was Ut, now 65, who captured Phuc’s agony on June 8, 1972, after the South Vietnamese military accidentally dropped napalm on civilians in Phuc’s village, Trang Bang, outside Saigon.
Not much of a fuss has ever been made by my war-promoting jew$media when it comes to U.S. or allied chemical weapons use.
Napalm sticks like a jelly. ‘‘The fire was stuck on her for a very long time,’’ Waibel says, and destroyed Phuc’s skin through the layer of collagen, leaving scars almost four times as thick as normal skin.
Phuc says her Christian faith brought her physical and emotional peace ‘‘in the midst of hatred, bitterness, pain, loss, hopelessness,’’ when the pain seemed insurmountable.
‘‘No operation, no medication, no doctor can help to heal my heart. The only one is a miracle, (that) God love me,’’ she says. ‘‘I just wish one day I am free from pain.’’
--more--" If I wasn't worried about the nudity I would post the iconic image.
