When Linden Terret turns 17 next week, he won't be celebrating with a day at the beach.
The Port Moody teen will be donating blood at the Canadian Blood Services' Vancouver headquarters. It's a donation he's been waiting to make since he was just five years old, the first time his mom became gravely ill.
In 1999 Melanie Terret developed aplastic anemia, a condition in which the bone marrow no longer produces new cells. She needed a bone marrow transplant to survive but her only sibling, an older brother, wasn't a match.
Terret was placed on the worldwide bone marrow registry, and waited.
For more than a year she got blood transfusions - every six days.
Linden was just five years old at the time and doesn't remember much, but his mom said he used to call her blood transfusions, "Filling up her gas tank," because they gave her some much-needed energy for a few days.
Eventually, a match was found (a law school student living in Massachusetts), and Terret had her bone marrow transplant on Valentine's Day in 2001.
Linden and his grandmother decorated his mom's hospital room with hearts before the transplant, knowing she'd be in isolation and wouldn't be able to see him for the next six weeks.
The next six years were relatively uneventful for Linden and his mom. Then in the fall of 2007 Terret had difficulty breathing and was back at the hospital.
A series of tests confirmed it wasn't related to her earlier illness. Terret had hepatopulmonary syndrome, a rare liver disease that causes low oxygen levels in the blood.
The only treatment is a liver transplant, so Terret was back on the list. Her condition deteriorated and she was hospitalized in May 2008.
Just before Christmas that year Terret was concentrating on keeping her strength up so doctors would let her go home for one last Christmas with her son, but a phone call on the evening of Dec. 22, 2008 changed that.
There was a donor, the surgeon said, and Terret would receive it the next morning.
A 13-year-old Linden opened his Christmas presents that year beside his mom's hospital bed, and a year after being hospitalized, Terret finally went home in May 2009.
She speaks about her ordeal at Canadian Blood Services events, and says people are often curious about her bone marrow and liver donors.
"They give me inspiration," she said. "The selfless gifts they've given me are amazing. But I had over 250 blood transfusions before all that. If I hadn't had those, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to have those gifts.
"I wouldn't have survived."
The amount of blood needed during a transplant surgery is "massive," Terret added. "So many people contributed to that, and they don't even realize the lives they've touched."
Linden always knew he wanted to repay those kindnesses in some way, and at 14 asked his mom how to go about donating blood. The minimum age is 17, so Linden plans to start a lifelong donation campaign on July 27, the very first day he's eligible, and he's even recruited a couple of friends to join him.
"I want to be one of those guys who gets to go up on stage at the Canadian Blood Services events, I want to get one of those certificates," for donating blood 50 or 100 times, Linden said.
The importance of donating, he added, is obvious.
"If nobody gave blood, I wouldn't have my mom."
To donate blood, visit www.blood.ca or call 1-888-2-DONATE. Upcoming clinics in the Tri-Cities are at the following locations:
COQUITLAM
July 19, 1-8 p.m. at Mundy Park Christian Fellowship (2600 Austin Ave.)
July 27, noon to 7 p.m. at Coquitlam Christian Centre (2665 Runnel Dr.)
Aug. 15, 1-8 p.m. at Place Maillardville Community Centre (1200 Cartier Ave.)
PORT COQUITLAM
Aug. 5, 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. at Terry Fox secondary (1260 Riverwood Gate)
Aug. 13, 1-8 p.m. Northside Church - Grace Campus (2606 Kingsway Ave.)
PORT MOODY
Aug. 9, 1-8 p.m. at Cornerstone SDA Community Church (1415 Noons Creek Dr.)
