Reverberations From War Complicate Vietnam Veterans’ End-of-Life Care

(By April Dembosky, KQED for California Healthline produced by Kaiser Health News)

Many of Ron Fleming’s fellow soldiers have spent the last five decades trying to forget what they saw — and did — in Vietnam.

But Fleming, now 74, has spent most of that time trying to hold onto it. He’s never been as proud as he was when he was 21.

Fleming was a door gunner in the war, hanging out of a helicopter on a strap with a machine gun in his hands. He fought in the Tet Offensive of 1968, sometimes for 40 hours straight, firing 6,000 rounds a minute. But he never gave much thought to catching a bullet himself.

“At 21, you’re bulletproof,” he said, as he sat on the edge of his hospital bed at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. “Dying wasn’t on the agenda.” Continue reading article here…

This story is part of a partnership that includes KQED, NPR and Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

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