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| Barry Payten is a recent organ donor recipient. |
CONDONG musician Barry Payten was just two weeks from death in 2004 when he got the call from Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital he had been anxiously waiting 18 months for.
Within days of undergoing a liver transplant, Mr Payten had recovered much of the vigour that living with hepatitis A since his 20s had stolen from him.
"The transplant has given me such a new lease on life," he marvelled.
The English-born 63-year-old, who used to be a session musician for legendary acts like Fleetwood Mac, feels so good these days he's launched himself back into the music industry, which his illness forced him to leave behind.
He helps manage two local bands and still straps on a guitar a couple of times a year to tour with English soft rockers Status Quo.
The transplant has given him something else in common with his old mate David Crosby from Crosby Stills & Nash, who underwent his own liver trans- plant in 1994.
But the hand of fate can be so seemingly random.
On the day he spoke to The Northern Star, Mr Payten had attended the funeral of a friend who had also been on the transplant waiting list but for whom that call never came.
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