Okay, so my big idea might not be an original idea per se, but I could be the first person to report back with a firsthand account.

Conventional wisdom holds that the brain of a cancer patient never fully recovers from the mental haze caused by chemo, but over the last six months or so, my mind has gotten sharper.

For months, I was losing house keys, couldn’t remember words (a cruel state of affairs for an editor), and blanking mid-conversation. It got to be pretty embarrassing.

My boyfriend wasn’t amused by my yes-I-lost-another-set-of-keys phone calls, my friends were miffed when I forgot to call them back for days, and on several occasions, I took the subway to the cancer center where I’m being treated when I really meant to go my job. Talk about a tragic comedy.

Needless to say, my chemo brain excuses were starting to wear thin with almost everyone, but luckily my trusty and all-powerful iPhone is proving to be the perfect combatant to the cognitive decay I once believed was inescapable.

We’ve all read about the importance of exercising our minds as we age. Medical reports have shown that by doing little things like brushing your teeth with the opposite hand, finishing a puzzle, and learning a new skill such as knitting (although bartending sounds way more fun), you strengthen your memory and improve cognitive response.

Well, since I bought my phone, I’ve been engaging in a host of activities that rely on detailed hand-eye coordination, which is another way to curb mental decline. For instance, I now text more often and faster, I play games all the time, and I’ve acquired some pretty impressive map-reading skills. Already, I’m off to a good start.

possibly the best purchase I've ever made

Before my iPhone, I rarely responded to text messages, and not because I don’t like my friends. Mostly, it was because I’d forget to check my inbox, and when I did, I knew it would take forever to text back with one hand and no keyboard on my raggedy Razor. And I’m just not that patient. But that has all changed. Now, I’m a master texter. I’m talking minimal back spaces and very few typos.

Finally, my iPhone allows me to instantly download games that test my speed and agility and, by default, boost my brain power. I’m a big fan of Sponge Bob’s Diner Dash, Where’s Waldo, and Slingshot Cowboy, but I’m thinking Apple should go a step further and develop a whole line of chemo brain apps. They could include a chess game with syringes as pieces, a medical word scramble (flagyl versus flagellant), and battleship against insurance companies.

Yes, sir, life is much better as a smart phone user. Thank you, new millennium. The latest cellular technology hasn’t just given me the world at my fingertips, but it may also prove to be the cure for my chemo brain on drugs.

the digital scale at MSKCC, the source of my latest torment, looks just like this.

For the last year, the scale on the sixth floor of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City has done nothing but torment me.

Three times a month, I have to get weighed in, and it racks my nerves each time. You’d think that being slim would be the last thing I’d be concerned about, but, alas, body image haunts cancer patients and civilians alike.

It all started when I set out on a mission to gain weight after losing 25 pounds post-surgery. I was looking sickly and thin, and decided for the first — and probably last — time in my life that I should eat whatever I wanted: bread, pasta, chocolate, or as I now refer to them, the axis of evil. Not such a smart idea looking back.

At first, it was all good. I put on a pound or two, then three or four. It didn’t take long before I was looking like my old self and fitting back into my clothes. Then before I knew it, I was 10 pounds heavier than I was pre-cancer, bursting out of my clothes but determined to squeeze into them anyway. My mom says it’s the steroids I have to take while on chemo. God bless her. I’m thinking it might be those chocolate cupcakes, but I’m more than happy to blame cancer.

Clearly, though, my quest to put on the pounds backfired. Before my diagnosis, I wasn’t far from my ideal weight, about five or so pounds. But now, it’s getting out of control. I’m the heaviest I’ve been. And while my doctors aren’t trippin because I’m in the same range as before, things done changed.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have to watch it all happen. But my regular weigh-ins, and the staff who document them like a plot graph, mean I get an accurate digital measure of my portly expansion thrice monthly. It’s my version of torture.

You see, I never owned a scale, nor did I make it a habit of getting on one. Ever. My theory about scales is simple: They’re self-inflicted punishment, and I’m good on that.

It’s one thing to be in denial. It’s another to face the ever-increasing number that — even in kilograms — can’t disguise the obvious. And while I’m fully aware that I need to keep in all in perspective and stay focused on the larger goal of whipping cancer that doesn’t stop the wave of dread from rolling through every Tuesday. In fact, I’m scheduled to meet my nemesis in about 20 minutes or so, and I feel like a pugilist hoping to make weight before a fight.

What I’m really wondering, though, is how I can lose 20 pounds by the end of the week, which is the same dilemma I had last week. I’m pretty sure it involves cutting back on the cupcakes, but isn’t life too short to give up chocolate even for a moment?

Maybe I’ll use that scale as my motivation. I figure if I stay focused on beating it, I might just come out triumphant. And when I do, I’m baking cupcakes to celebrate.

50's sickly appearance for his next role as a cancer patient

Looking at pictures of 50 Cent’s dramatic weight loss takes me back to 2008, the year I had my surgery and started chemo. It sure wasn’t pretty, but more on that in a moment.
 
50 dropped 60 pounds — reportedly by adopting a liquid diet and walking on a treadmill for three hours a day — for his latest role as a football player who becomes a cancer patient.

His photos are shocking. His face is gaunt, and his eyes seem disturbingly empty. It got me wondering if that’s what folks thought about me when I dropped 30 pounds at the start of my cancer experience.

I only have a few pictures of myself at 120 pounds, and I can’t look at them without cringing. My collarbone is protruding, and my eyes look sunken in. I underwent rapid weight loss, which, as you can tell from the photo, is pretty unforgiving.

When I smiled, I felt really self-conscious about showing my teeth because my pearly whites turned dull, and I looked like I was a few vitamins short of dysentery. Perhaps worst of all, though, I lost my hips and thighs, which, for a black woman, is the equivalent of losing your most prized assets.

I cried when I couldn’t fill out a pair of size 4 jeans. I remember being around my girls, who are all nice and thick, and thinking about how unattractive I looked. When surrounded by their voluptuous bodies, I felt like Star Jones. And that gave me a whole new appreciation for curves and a little body fat.

It took me about a year before I began to feel and look like my normal self. When I ditched my first round of chemo cocktails for Avastin, the drug I’m on now, I no longer had a constant medicine taste in my mouth. And when my appetite returned, I decided to eat whatever I wanted, and it worked.
 
I started busting out my cancer clothes with the quickness, and I said many Hail Mary’s when my butt returned. When some random dude on the street complimented me on my curvaceousness, I got really excited. He had no idea how much he’d made my day. I felt like I was back after a very unattractive 12 months.

So, I write all this in the hope that 50′s new movie, which I’m going to see even though I heard it’s “good and terrible,” shows him rebound from his sickly appearance. Clearly, my own metamorphosis from Skeletor to thick girl is proof that it’s possible to bounce back from cancer-causing weight loss.

In fact, when I go to the hospital for treatment, I see very few cancer patients who look like cancer patients. You’d never even know that most of them were on chemo. That makes me thankful to live in the time of modern medicine, which is probably really rudimentary in the grand scheme of it all. Nevertheless, we’ve come a long way from the images of that frail, near-death dude in the Julia Roberts’ movie Dying Young.

Recently, one of the nurses in the chemo unit told me that I was pretty healthy. You know, uhm, cancer aside. It sounds like an oxymoron, but luckily in the 21st century, it doesn’t have to be.

I hope 50′s new flick represents us right.