I don't feel my age, I feel dead

I turned, but my knee did not and now I sit thinking that life would be nice without pain. I injured myself, well was injured in the service, and those injuries are compounded on the fact that my body is older than it was. I am in an exercise program and the 70 year olds are asking if I am ok. Having been seriously active all my life, then the military, multiple injuries and life is not the same. I am not saying things could not be worse, oh they could, but I watch my 17 year old daughter, the same age that I signed up for the military, and see how she just spurts around, leaping here and there. I was like that, I had that ability. Just as I was, she has a thin frame, but very strong, and I miss it. I am waiting for her to come to my side while we are on the mat and say, "mom, maybe you need to just take it easy."
I have to laugh since my instructors now tell me that if it hurts to slow down or stop, so different from the screaming in your face if your leg isn't blown off, it better be moving. The suck it up, suck up the pain, deal with the swollen joints, the multiple bruises, the cuts, the bites, the whole lot of it and all the time thinking that I was being "strong" and "tough." At the same time that this strong and tough thought was going through my head, the damage to my body, the damage that cannot be undone was being compounded upon.
I remember the pull off the 10 foot cliff in the jungles of Panama, the log that stopped my decent and split. The rocks which were plucked out of the side of my face and forehead, the pain of my neck and knee and shoulder. The pounding in my head for days. I was taken to the ER, no x-rays, just the go back to the barracks and if you are still hurting tomorrow, come in. I had been knocked unconscious, my head was throbbing, I had little holes in the side of my face and forehead from where the rocks were plucked out by a syringe. I did go back the next day, had all the complaints (only thing they decided to list on my medical charts was my knee because it was completely swollen). So I get one day to recuperate and  back to the long hours of walking around all night, catching dogs by the arm (with a rap of course) and training, and working and thinking that I was being strong. I was told to suck it up and I had. Even when the tears began to fall, I did not return to the ER, you only are allowed there once, I already had been the next day and that was looked down on. I mean, hey I should have just sucked it all up, instead of going to the ER just took out my knife and plucked the rocks out myself, yes a little sarcastic.
So now that the curve of my neck is backwards, I have arthritis, degenerative disc disease, bulging disk, pain, pain that i am not about to suck up. Pain that I had put a claim in for, and the VA did x-rays (a few months after I was out) sure enough in the x-rays the curve going the wrong way, but a denial stating there was no record of treatment for cervical injury. You know, neck pain, that could just be about anything, like maybe the fact that I was pulled off a 10 foot cliff, hit my head on a log, my face buried into the dirt enough for rocks to get imbedded in my face, then another accident and again no x-rays, sure that's not why when I went into the military my neck was fine and now its just always in pain, different levels of pain, but pain none the less.
That is one of the frustrations being a veteran. You are told to suck it up, that you cannot go to the ER, that you need to get back out on the flightline, or in the jungle, you suck it up to be a tough solider and when you are crippled and in pain, the VA says there is no treatment for the condition. So as medical personnel they did a terrible job, doing the same thing, telling us to suck it up, only putting one listed complaint in our medical records, and now we pay again.
Constant pain has a way of making you a little irritable, and I guess this is my venting for some of it.