Every once in a while, you come across a story so touching that it needs more than just a tweet.

This is one of them.

A thread.

[Hint: It’s about a kid, a hospital, and Canadians doing Canadian things]

( @Goodable)

This is 9-year old Carter Dery.

He lives with a genetic condition that’s so rare, doctors don’t even have a name for it. By the time he was 9, he’d already had 15 surgeries.

That’s not a typo: Fifteen.

Imagine what that does to a kid.

This Halloween, all Carter wanted was to dress up as a football player (that's him in the pic).

For a kid, Halloween can be a great equalizer. When everyone’s wearing a costume, no one knows that you’re different.

But suddenly, everything changed.

Doctors found another cyst.

They scheduled surgery for – you guessed it – October 31.

In Canada, we have universal healthcare, which is great because you don’t have to pay for surgeries, but you also don’t get to choose the date.

Carter was devastated.

But that's when things got Canadian.

A family friend went online and asked neighbors if Carter could knock on their doors a day earlier, on October 30th, so he could still go Trick-or-Treating.

Pretty simple, right?

Here’s what happened next.

One said yes. Then two. Then a whole street.

Then within a few hours, literally HUNDREDS of people, including random strangers all basically said ‘hell yeah, we’ll do Halloween a day earlier.’

All for a 9-year old kid that they’d never met.

So now, you had all these people ready to do Halloween early.

Great - except for one thing:

Now there were TOO MANY people. Seriously. There was no way Carter could visit all those homes.

So they came up with Plan B.

A local banquet hall (Capri Club) turned their parking lot into a kind of Carter’s Halloween Extravaganza.

This is what it looked like.

Hundreds of Canadians, in a parking lot, braving the rain, with candy and costumes – for the sake of a 9-year old boy they'd never met.

Then comes the big moment – Carter arrives – feeling like the king of the world.

This is the exact moment.

(wait, it gets better)

So Carter's a big fan of the @Ticats, the local football team.

A Ticats player shows up.

And this is the moment Carter finds out he's going to the Grey Cup (it’s Canada’s equivalent of the Superbowl).

And here’s the kicker.

When Carter found out about all this, the first thing he said was “mom, I won’t be able to finish all that candy.”

So guess what he’s doing?

( @610CKTB)

On Halloween day, before his surgery, he’s going to go door-to-door to all the other patients in the hospital and giving out his candy.

Some of them are kids, like himself, who couldn’t go Trick or Treating either.

That’s the thing about goodness. It spreads.

The world can be messed up. Seriously. Canada isn’t perfect, but man, when people get together, it can be a thing of beauty. Hundreds of Canadian towns would've done the same thing.

Maybe the world could use more of it.

More kids like Carter, and more @Goodable.

[End]

Speaking of goodness, this is the best part.

This is what happened the morning after, when Carter walked into the hospital.

Meanwhile, how's this for an update: Doctors at @HamHealthSci say the surgery went great - even better than they expected.

And this was Carter just before the surgery, at the hospital.

Look closely: He's still wearing his @Ticats gloves.

( @CFL)