There's a Cell Phone in My Salad

I’ve got a fantastic excuse for all those irritating things that cause hiccups in my daily path – it’s called chemo brain! The wonderful Dr. Z (see above) warned me about this during our first consultation. “You’ll be tired, you’ll lose all your hair, you might get numbness in your extremities, you’ll get sores in your mouth, you could sunburned more easily, you’ll get chemo brain, you’ll……” “HANG ON!” I interrupted. You have to shout to get a word in edge-wise with Dr Z. He’s from Brooklyn and talks as if he’s addressing the top row of the bleachers in a large football stadium. “What the heck is ‘chemo brain’ ”? I asked, hoping it wasn’t terminal.

Turns out that when you’re on chemo, at least breast cancer chemo, your memory can get a bit iffy. This was not the best news to give a middle-aged woman whose memory is already a shadow of its former iron-clad self. “Don’t worry – it usually comes back,” he continued. Now, Dr. Z might have thought this was reassuring, but usually was not what I’d hoped to hear.

There didn’t seem much point worrying about something beyond my control, so, looking to put a positive spin on the situation, I announced to my husband that the next time I called him Toby (the dog) or Barnaby (the cat), he was to understand that my brain was clouded and it was all the chemo’s fault. He looked at me over the top of his reading glasses and rolled his eyes. What is it with men? Just because he can remember everything that’s happened since this morning. …

I quickly got into the swing of blaming everything on “chemo brain,” though, to be honest, I don’t think my memory is any worse than it was. But you’ve got to admit – it’s a great excuse. And it is, of course, the reason I left my cell phone in the bottom of the salad spinner and thus, finally, joined my daughters’ Sopping Wet Cell Phone Club.

I know it sounds funny, but I’m really annoyed with myself. How stupid …  “oooh, no, poor thing, don’t you know she has chemo brain. She can’t think straight!”  Well, what happened was this. I was talking to my mother as I went off to my vegetable garden to pick lettuce for dinner. Having hung up, I cursed my pocketless skirt–and tried tucking the phone into my bra. That didn’t work because every time I bent over to pick something the phone fell out. So when it finally landed in the salad spinner, I left it there. Seemed a good temporary solution. I wandered off to the front flower beds to add some nasturtium flowers and leaves to the mix, and to check on the tomatoes. I picked two early ripe ones. Had a chat with a neighbor. Gave my nephew, Lucas, directions for his run. Did some weeding. Went inside and had a chat with my brother, Andrew, visiting from Jamaica, while I ran water over the salad, giving it a good swish.

The phone bobbed to the surface. NO!!! Dead as a dodo. I charged upstairs to the bathroom to get the hairdryer, took out the battery, water dripping from the microphone and out of the keypad. I’d recently coached Emma on how to dry her wet phone with a hairdryer, and she’s back in business. But I don’t think her phone had actually been submerged like mine.

Being the sort of person who tends to have a Plan B up her sleeve, I’m thinking that if I can’t get my dear little phone back in action, maybe it’s a sign that I should upgrade to something a bit fancier. I wonder if the nice people at Verizon give discounts on a Droid to people with chemo brain?

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