Kelly Reeves was getting ready for a trip when her phone slipped into a sink full of water.
Panic moment! She quickly picked up the wet phone and tried to turn it on, but nothing worked.
Her first reaction? She got dressed, drove to the nearest store, and bought a new model at full price.    
     A new study finds that fear of losing your phone is a common illness. About 66 percent of those
surveyed suffer from nomophobia or "no mobile phone phobia". Interestingly, more women worry
about losing their phone than men.    
     Fortunately, there's a solution.    
     The first step is to figure out if you have nomophobia. Checking your phone too often is one thing,
but the true sign of a problem is that you can't conduct business or go about your routine when the fear
becomes so severe.    
     Do you go to unusual lengths to make sure you have your phone? That's another sign of a problem.
If you find you check your phone plenty of times per hour, or a total of an hour per day, there may be
a problem.    
     Some of the treatments are similar to those for treating anxiety attacks: Leaving the phone behind
and not checking e-mail or text messages, and then learning to tolerate the after anxiety. Even if this
leads to a high level of worry and stress, the solution is to push through the fear and learn to deal with
not having your phone.    
     Of course, there are also technological alternatives. Luis Levy, a co-founder at Novy PR, says he
uses an application called Cerberus that can automatically track the location of his phone. To find it, he
can just go to a Web site and see the phone's location.    
     He also insures his phone through a service called Asurion. The company's description of its product
reads like a prescription for anxiety: "60 million phones are lost, stolen or damaged each year. You'll
have complete peace of mind knowing that your phone is protected and you can quickly reconnect
with family,friends and work, as soon as the very next day!"