It was just a routine gallbladder surgery for Edmonton's Brenda Kinnear. However, it was that surgery that changed her life forever.

The mother of two boys in their late 20s and early 30s left hospital after that surgery on oxygen. A few days later, doctors warned her that she had end-stage idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

In November 2002, she was put on a double-lung transplant list and she waited for five years, but doctors had a hard time finding a match for the mother, a four-foot-11 woman who was in her 50s.

As she needed a set of lungs that were from a 12-year-old child, her two sons -- Darryl and Shannon Kinnear -- offered to each donate part of their lungs to help their mother.