Fighting for Freedom by Killing the Pain.

This symposium includes six personal narratives about military veterans' experiences receiving health care through the Military Health System or the Veterans' Health Administration. Five of the narratives were autobiographical accounts of men's personal experience of care and one of the accounts was written by a wife who watched her husband suffer with chronic pain after leaving the military. There is a good deal of literature in military and veteran's medical research pertaining to psychological and physical trauma rehabilitation; however, there is little reflection on what it is like for injured military personnel or veterans to overcome obstacles while in pain and attempting interface with these governmental health care systems. This symposium provides a closer look at the difficulties faced as these six men attempt to fight for personalized care in a collective heath care system.