What a coincidence- I may have read about myself in a book

So I'm sitting/laying, donating plasma, chilling out, pumping away and reading my book. (Body Clutter By Marla Cilley- FlyLady & Leanne Ely- The Dinner Diva) I get to a certain paragraph and I about jumped up and ran over to show my husband who was just across from me. You can't quite do that though with a huge needle in your arm, hooked up to a machine. So I (im)patiently waited for someone to walk by so I could ask for help. J____ walked by and I asked if she'd do me a favor and show the book to my husband. I showed her which paragraph to have him read. D_____ got curious and headed over to see what it was all about. He read along with my husband not knowing what was going on. John (my husband) and I are chatting back and forth saying, "That might have been us. Oh my gosh it is quite possible."

What I had read very well happened to us. D_____ laughed, "Yeah right." Me and hubby said seriously that exact situation happened to us down to every detail. Hubby proceeds to tell him- "Google it. Google my name and it will come up with pictures." I tell him, "John and our son was on the front page of the LA times as well as other newspapers and people told us they saw us on the news as well"  So then D______ starts teasing us about he's not as cool as us because he's not on Google, etc.

Here is what I read:

"On the news recently I saw a couple of ships returning to port after being out to sea for over nine months. One sailor was searching for his wife. When he finally found her, he could not believe the transformation she had undergone. She had decluttered her body!"

Now it could very well have been a coincidence. Sure it could have been someone else but that happened to us. My husband was on deployment in 2002-2003 (USS Shiloh) and between September 2002 and April 2003 I had lost 42 pounds. As they docked in port he looked and looked and could not find me because he did not recognize me! What an amazing feeling when he did finally realize it was me and he picked me up and we smiled at each other.

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sailor-john-reeder-hugs-his-wife-jill-as-he-returns-with-news-photo/1951987

And someone caught it on camera. I didn't even know this picture existed until someone had found another photo of us a few years back and we started searching for others.


There were reporters and cameras all around us and we did speak to a reporter or two.

This picture was also on the front page of the LA times to our surprise.

Unfortunately this is the only picture we've found that included our daughter, hidden by the balloon. Look at how my son is holding on to his dad. Yep, tears are streaming about now. That's John's mom proud as can be in the background.

Photos and stories ended up everywhere and we still probably haven't seen or read them all yet. The part of the story that really makes me think it could have been us was that the ship was out for 9 months. Until that point, deployments were only 6 months, but it was the beginning of the war and they were extended. At the time it was a record breaking deployment for the time out to sea.

Maybe what I read was about us, maybe not. Either way it was really cool to read and brought back some awesome memories! Yes I should show some before and after pictures, but I don't have them on my laptop, and I want to get this published and I'm tired. So remind me and I will add them. K?