Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year.

I have always unabashedly loved February. When I was a kid, hearts were my thing, had bunches of them hanging all over my pink bedroom. Loving You Barbie was living in my plastic penthouse suite and every notebook I owned was covered in my original heart renderings. I’ve found myself lingering on memories of childhood happiness lately, because I see so much of it in my girls, and because sometimes I need a visit to that happy heart-filled place.

In year’s to come, this February might be the one I look back on for a moment of sweet contentment. I’ve had a breakthrough of sorts and I am tentatively hopeful. Last week I bit the bullet and did a trial for a pain pump, basically a pacemaker for chronic pain disease. My Doctor placed a catheter in my spine and then pumped pain medication directly into the spinal fluid. I spent the next two hours trying to piss-off my pain and, in the end, it only reached a level 2 of 10. Typically it would have been a 6.

Sitting in the recovery room felt like I was a attending a revival. The girl next to me kept saying “I can lift my arm! I haven’t done that in years!” It was truly amazing. The trial usually lasts for two days, but I got a spinal headache on my way out the first day, and my Doc had to pull the catheter. However, the first day was a success and we are going to move forward with the actual implant.

Wariness has never been my thing, I’m not good at it. So, while I wait for my insurance to move this process along, I am going to buy those heart push point pencils (remember those??) I’ve been eyeing at Target, I’m going to paint my toes pink and I’m going to eat too many gummy, sugar filled things. Hope you all treat your inner child to an unabashed Valentines day.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year. – Ralph Waldo Emerson