Lasers may ease pain for 'napalm girl' in AP photograph

[webfact]

Lasers may ease pain for 'napalm girl' in AP photograph
By JENNIFER KAY

MIAMI (AP) — In the photograph that 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.

"So many years I thought that I have no more scars, no more pain when I'm in heaven. But now — heaven on earth for me!" Phuc says upon her arrival in Miami to see a dermatologist who specializes in laser treatments for burn patients.

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 also will relieve the deep aches and pains that plague her to this day.

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.

Ut remembers the girl screaming in Vietnamese, "Too hot! Too hot!" He put her in the AP van where she crouched on the floor, her burnt skin raw and peeling off her body as she sobbed, "I think I'm dying, too hot, too hot, I'm dying."

He took her to a hospital. Only then did he return to the Saigon bureau to file his photographs, including the one of Phuc on fire that would win the Pulitzer Prize.

Phuc suffered serious burns over a third of her body; at that time, most people who sustained such injuries over 10 percent of their bodies died, Waibel says.

Napalm sticks like a jelly, so there was no way for victims like Phuc to outrun the heat, as they could in a regular fire. "The fire was stuck on her for a very long time," Waibel says, and destroyed her skin down through the layer of collagen, leaving her with scars almost four times as thick as normal skin.

While she spent years doing painful exercises to preserve her range of motion, her left arm still doesn't extend as far as her right arm, and her desire to learn how to play the piano has been thwarted by stiffness in her left hand. Tasks as simple as carrying her purse on her left side are too difficult.

"As a child, I loved to climb on the tree, like a monkey," picking the best guavas, tossing them down to her friends, Phuc says. "After I got burned, I never climbed on the tree anymore and I never played the game like before with my friends. It's really difficult. I was really, really disabled."

Triggered by scarred nerve endings that misfire at random, her pain is especially acute when the seasons change in Canada, where Phuc defected with her husband in the early 1990s. The couple live outside Toronto, and they have two sons, ages 21 and 18.

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."

Ut thinks of Phuc as a daughter, and he worried when, during their regular phone calls, she described her pain. When he travels now in Vietnam, he sees how the war lingers in hospitals there, in children born with defects attributed to Agent Orange and in others like Phuc, who were caught in napalm strikes. If their pain continues, he wonders, how much hope is there for Phuc?

Ut says he's worried about the treatments. "Forty-three years later, how is laser doing this? I hope the doctor can help her. ... When she was 18 or 20, but now she's over 50! That's a long time."

Waibel has been using lasers to treat burn scars, including napalm scars, for about a decade. Each treatment typically costs $1,500 to $2,000, but Waibel offered to donate her services when Phuc contacted her for a consultation. Waibel's father-in-law had heard Phuc speak at a church several years ago, and he approached her after hearing her describe her pain.

At the first treatment in Waibel's office, a scented candle lends a comforting air to the procedure room, and Phuc's husband holds her hand in prayer.

Phuc tells Waibel her pain is "10 out of 10" — the worst of the worst.

The type of lasers being used on Phuc's scars originally were developed to smooth out wrinkles around the eyes, Waibel says. The lasers heat skin to the boiling point to vaporize scar tissue. Once sedatives have been administered and numbing cream spread thickly over Phuc's skin, Waibel dons safety glasses and aims the laser. Again and again, a red square appears on Phuc's skin, the laser fires with a beep and a nurse aims a vacuum-like hose at the area to catch the vapor.

The procedure creates microscopic holes in the skin, which allows topical, collagen-building medicines to be absorbed deep through the layers of tissue.

Waibel expects Phuc to need up to seven treatments over the next eight or nine months.

Wrapped in blankets, drowsy from painkillers, her scarred skin a little red from the procedure, Phuc made a little fist pump. Compared to the other surgeries and skin grafts when she was younger, the lasers were easier to take.

"This was so light, just so easy," she says.

A couple weeks later, home in Canada, Phuc says her scars have reddened and feel tight and itchy as they heal — but she's eager to continue the treatments.

"Maybe it takes a year," she says. "But I am really excited — and thankful."
___

Associated Press reporter Joshua Replogle contributed to this report from Ajax, Ontario.


-- (c) Associated Press 2015-10-26

[ALLSEEINGEYE]

The true horrors of war.

How many millions of other stories like this, from the last 50 years, can be told but are not?

[micmichd]

Sounds like it's healing if it's itchy.

All the best to this brave lady.

[Tassie Norm]

Tears in my eyes for a brave young girl, now a woman who has suffered for so long - and like, alas, many others. 1 AFH Vung Tau 1969/70

[Jonmarleesco]

Shouldn't the U.S. government be funding the treatment?

[Seastallion]

The true horrors of war.

How many millions of other stories like this, from the last 50 years, can be told but are not?

A few weeks ago I visited the War Remnants Museum in Saigon.

Very interesting to see the other side's narrative. Of course, that may be as biased as the one we've been fed, nonetheless, I could not contain my tears.

The photos of GI's holding up decapitated heads, or dragging prisoners behind a jeep, or beating hill tribe people who had no connection to the war....it was all too horrid and I had to leave.

Agent orange...what utter criminal callousness. The genetic damage will be with them for generations.

The land mines....the amputees trundling around the streets.

For what? For what???

And of course, napalm.

For what????

[gemguy]

Shouldn't the U.S. government be funding the treatment?

You would think...but the US government is too busy waging war somewhere else now while the current politicians are too busy with their own personal agendas...as is usually the case anyhow.

Cheers

[gemguy]

The true horrors of war.

How many millions of other stories like this, from the last 50 years, can be told but are not?

A few weeks ago I visited the War Remnants Museum in Saigon.

Very interesting to see the other side's narrative. Of course, that may be as biased as the one we've been fed, nonetheless, I could not contain my tears.

The photos of GI's holding up decapitated heads, or dragging prisoners behind a jeep, or beating hill tribe people who had no connection to the war....it was all too horrid and I had to leave.

Agent orange...what utter criminal callousness. The genetic damage will be with them for generations.

The land mines....the amputees trundling around the streets.

For what? For what???

And of course, napalm.

For what????

For what???.......you ask.

Those that orchestrated and sustained the whole affair had dozens of reasons.....but none of them worthy of destroying a nation and killing millions of people and or sacrificing over 50,000 of their own.....but they believed it was justified....as what else would they tell themselves.

Cheers

[Tassie Norm]

Shouldn't the U.S. government be funding the treatment?

You would think...but the US government is too busy waging war somewhere else now while the current politicians are too busy with their own personal agendas...as is usually the case anyhow.

Cheers

And who, do you think/believe was subsidising the North Vietnamese? It was not one-sided. A simple question from a bloke who was there as a young bloke. And I'm not American, simply one of around 50,000 Aussies who served in that conflict. With respect, where were you, for example, 45 years ago? What nationality? Were you born? Revert to my my opening question............

[micmichd]

The weapons were from the Soviet Union, a country which doesn't exist anymore. The military and political leadership was genuine North Vietnamese.

I'm German, and I was near Cambodia in 1969.

[Tassie Norm]

Correct Micmichd! Go to the top of the class! The fact that the Soviet Union does not exist in 'that form' anymore is totally irrelevant. It existed then. Takes two to tango. And armaments to dance with. Off topic eh? As a trained medic I feel for victims of war - at my age now laying blame is futile. You are German, understand?

[Tassie Norm]

I just made what I believed was a relevant contribution to this topic, and our German friend above, posted and - got cut off, In the vernacular, nah, won't lower myself. Bye.

[micmichd]

Your "dancing partner" was Ho Chi Minh, not Brezhniev. USA invaded Vietnam, and the Vietnamese defended it.

The fact that I'm German is a bit off-topic here. But if you want to know: I know what German medical doctors did in WWII, I think the mechanisms that allowed them to do so legally are still there, and I fight them.

[oncearugge]

Many "off topic" comments here.

Can we not hope/wish that the treatment being given to this lady assists in easing her pain?

Pain that is the result of horrendous injury inflicted on a small child by rabid Western politicians who are, to this day, still striving to destroy the World with ill conceived American led wars.

Edited October 26, 2015 by oncearugge

[55Jay]

Shouldn't the U.S. government be funding the treatment?

The article states the South Vietnamese accidentally dropped the napalm on this village.

[camble]

Without trying to politicize the tragedy, best wishes for this courageous woman.

[humqdpf]

Shouldn't the U.S. government be funding the treatment?

A lesson from history:

Invariably, those who win wars generally do not pay for them, even in cases where they started them.

This also applies to the USA - although much money has been spent on finding MIAs in Vietnam, almost nothing has been spent on a) payments to the Vietnamese, whether relatives of the dead or the wounded on on either side (an estimated 3.8 million people died as a direct result of the war, of which 58,300 were US military personnel) nothing has been paid to those suffered in so many ways - remember that the 'Napalm Girl' was a civilian on the South Vietnam side (to the extent that it makes sense to talk about sides when it comes to children!) c) don't expect any compensation for the millions who died, were wounded or suffered greatly as a result of the war in Iraq (found because of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist

[55Jay]

Your "dancing partner" was Ho Chi Minh, not Brezhniev. USA invaded Vietnam, and the Vietnamese defended it.

The fact that I'm German is a bit off-topic here. But if you want to know: I know what German medical doctors did in WWII, I think the mechanisms that allowed them to do so legally are still there, and I fight them.

Saying the US "invaded" Vietnam and the Vietnamese defended, is overly simplistic.

[micmichd]

Your "dancing partner" was Ho Chi Minh, not Brezhniev. USA invaded Vietnam, and the Vietnamese defended it.

The fact that I'm German is a bit off-topic here. But if you want to know: I know what German medical doctors did in WWII, I think the mechanisms that allowed them to do so legally are still there, and I fight them.

Saying the US "invaded" Vietnam and the Vietnamese defended, is overly simplistic.

Yes, the French were there before, but they had already left. I can see no reason for the US to hang around in the Gulf of Tongking, they were not threatened by Vietnam.

[55Jay]

Your "dancing partner" was Ho Chi Minh, not Brezhniev. USA invaded Vietnam, and the Vietnamese defended it.

The fact that I'm German is a bit off-topic here. But if you want to know: I know what German medical doctors did in WWII, I think the mechanisms that allowed them to do so legally are still there, and I fight them.

Saying the US "invaded" Vietnam and the Vietnamese defended, is overly simplistic.

Yes, the French were there before, but they had already left. I can see no reason for the US to hang around in the Gulf of Tongking, they were not threatened by Vietnam.

You are still glossing over key events and details. Deliberately I suppose. You don't have to agree with or even like them, but they are still there.

[connda]

I'm glad to hear his. That picture along with My Lai are pretty well frozen in my mind for life.

Perhaps Dupont and other napalm manufacturers should pony up a few thousand to pay for the treatment of this "collateral damage" as is so widely propagated into today's political lexicon to basically mean, "So sad, too bad. You probably deserved it."

No such thing as innocent victims to the NWO; just one less useless eater to feed

Edited October 26, 2015 by connda

[connda]

Your "dancing partner" was Ho Chi Minh, not Brezhniev. USA invaded Vietnam, and the Vietnamese defended it.

The fact that I'm German is a bit off-topic here. But if you want to know: I know what German medical doctors did in WWII, I think the mechanisms that allowed them to do so legally are still there, and I fight them.

Saying the US "invaded" Vietnam and the Vietnamese defended, is overly simplistic.

Nope, the US had a duty to keep them "vile, slant-eyed, commie-bastards from over-running the world" - or at least this was to official hype I heard in the US during 'Nam.

The 10,000 day war, and the US again get's it butt handed to them on a plate; Korea before that. Funny how that has worked out for virtually every undeclared war, police action, power-projection exercise, whatever you wish to call it, since WWII. Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan. Great job in all though places too. NATO did do a top-notch job shredding Libya, but now there is a Tsunami wall of immigrates breaking across the shores of Southern Europe, and that tidal surge is not receding as it pushes the flotsom and jetsom into Northern Europe. Great job there too. Bomb the hell out of everything and da*n the consequences including collateral damage. Ever wonder why old people get cynical? Live long enough and you'll figure it out, well, unless your born with a silver spoon embedded in your posterior at birth.

This was during my era. How about if you're under 53, don't bother to comment. You weren't their unless you lied to join the military. I'm a vet. That doesn't mean we bought the propaganda.

Edited October 26, 2015 by connda

[55Jay]

Your "dancing partner" was Ho Chi Minh, not Brezhniev. USA invaded Vietnam, and the Vietnamese defended it.

The fact that I'm German is a bit off-topic here. But if you want to know: I know what German medical doctors did in WWII, I think the mechanisms that allowed them to do so legally are still there, and I fight them.

Saying the US "invaded" Vietnam and the Vietnamese defended, is overly simplistic.

Nope, the US had a duty to keep them "vile, slant-eyed, commie-bastards from over-running the world" - or at least this was to official hype I heard in the US during 'Nam.

The 10,000 day war, and the US again get's it butt handed to them on a plate; Korea before that. Funny how that has worked out for virtually every undeclared war, police action, power-projection exercise, whatever you wish to call it, since WWII. Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan. Great job in all though places too. NATO did do a top-notch job shredding Libya, but now there is a Tsunami wall of immigrates breaking across the shores of Southern Europe, and that tidal surge is not receding as it pushes the flotsom and jetsom into Northern Europe. Great job there too. Bomb the hell out of everything and da*n the consequences including collateral damage. Ever wonder why old people get cynical? Live long enough and you'll figure it out, well, unless your born with a silver spoon embedded in your posterior at birth.

This was during my era. How about if you're under 53, don't bother to comment. You weren't their unless you lied to join the military. I'm a vet. That doesn't mean we bought the propaganda.

The first line of your comment was relevant. Thanks.

[gemguy]

Shouldn't the U.S. government be funding the treatment?

You would think...but the US government is too busy waging war somewhere else now while the current politicians are too busy with their own personal agendas...as is usually the case anyhow.

Cheers

And who, do you think/believe was subsidising the North Vietnamese? It was not one-sided. A simple question from a bloke who was there as a young bloke. And I'm not American, simply one of around 50,000 Aussies who served in that conflict. With respect, where were you, for example, 45 years ago? What nationality? Were you born? Revert to my my opening question............

You are talking to the wrong person about the Vietnam conflict as I have read more about the history of that particular conflict than 99% of the average citizens as I find that particular part of history to be fascinating.

Unfortunately the USA politicians and the military and the USA corporations developed into a war mongering nation while the Vietnam era was clear confirmation of that.

The politicians are still at it to this day while they always self justify their reasons for applying their mighty military forces.

Yes sir the Chinese first and then the Russians were subsidizing that war ...however it was not the Russians dropping bombs and killing the citizens in mass trying to force the Northern half of the country to be a democracy....even though they would have been better off if they did develop a democracy......but it was their country and their destiny to decide ...rather than having it forced upon them by foreign entities.

All of this was argued over and over and over again but the USA political administrations, during that 20 year period, simply ignored all of that and carried on with a war mongering agenda

I know all about the many reasons the USA was involved in that conflict and the many reasons they decided to sustain the conflict

All in all, for the USA, the Vietnam conflict was approximately 20 years of good business for the USA economy at the cost of 50,000 plus dead Americans and they finally decided to walk away ( so to speak ) from a 20 year mistake.

There remains a small percent of Americans that still support all of what happened over there in Vietnam while they all recognize the whole affair could have been avoided if the politicians and the military and the corporations had not been so gung ho to apply the military might they had developed and on hand during that time.

It is somewhat the same now so not much has changed....just the countries that are on the receiving end of the USA and their overwhelming armed forces.

And hey...I support the USA in most everything it does....but the armed forces aspect of the USA has caused a lot of problems while I recognize it has also resolved a lot of problems....but in Vietnam, during that era, it created a much bigger problem than originally existed.

Cheers

Edited October 27, 2015 by gemguy

[bangon04]

"Even more important to Phuc, Waibel says the treatments also will relieve the deep aches and pains that plague her to this day."

But unfortunately nothing they do can ease the pain of having to keep looking at that damn photo of herself every day for the rest of her life.....

[Seastallion]

Your "dancing partner" was Ho Chi Minh, not Brezhniev. USA invaded Vietnam, and the Vietnamese defended it.

The fact that I'm German is a bit off-topic here. But if you want to know: I know what German medical doctors did in WWII, I think the mechanisms that allowed them to do so legally are still there, and I fight them.

Saying the US "invaded" Vietnam and the Vietnamese defended, is overly simplistic.

Nope, the US had a duty to keep them "vile, slant-eyed, commie-bastards from over-running the world" - or at least this was to official hype I heard in the US during 'Nam.

The 10,000 day war, and the US again get's it butt handed to them on a plate; Korea before that. Funny how that has worked out for virtually every undeclared war, police action, power-projection exercise, whatever you wish to call it, since WWII. Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan. Great job in all though places too. NATO did do a top-notch job shredding Libya, but now there is a Tsunami wall of immigrates breaking across the shores of Southern Europe, and that tidal surge is not receding as it pushes the flotsom and jetsom into Northern Europe. Great job there too. Bomb the hell out of everything and da*n the consequences including collateral damage. Ever wonder why old people get cynical? Live long enough and you'll figure it out, well, unless your born with a silver spoon embedded in your posterior at birth.

This was during my era. How about if you're under 53, don't bother to comment. You weren't their unless you lied to join the military. I'm a vet. That doesn't mean we bought the propaganda.

I'm under 53, and was 11 when the war ended, so I think you meant to say "if you're under 60".

Regardless of my age, I clearly remember watching the news on TV. I recall seeing the photo of the OP. I recall the lectures from my mum about the conflict (she, unfortunately, was slightly indoctrinated, but fortunately also forward-thinking. She got some of it right (eg, the horrors of war) but at the same time got the politics wrong).