Utah artist regains life with aid of strangers

The last time I wrote about Seth Winegar it was the end of June and he wasn't doing so well.

The celebrated Utah artist, whose paintings are featured in several museums around the country as well as at the Meyer Gallery on Park City's Main Street, was in a holding pattern in an apartment near a hospital in Pittsburgh, waiting for two new lungs and a new liver.

He hadn't picked up a brush in weeks and if he didn't get word soon that donor organs were on the way, he might never pick one up again.

Such are the harsh realities of cystic fibrosis, the lung-deterioration disease Seth, 32, has had since birth.

Whereas a normal person's body parts tend to wear out at roughly the same rate as everything else, victims of cystic fibrosis need replacement lungs and livers long before they're ready to see their last sunset.

Or, in Seth's case, paint their last one.

To get the new (actually used) parts, Seth had cashed in every penny he'd ever saved from selling his paintings. Plus he'd double-mortgaged his house. His parents did likewise, because the hospital in Pittsburgh said they'd need $650,000 up front for the surgeries.

The Winegars arrived in debt up to their eyeballs but ready to pay the bill.

They were buying time.

At least 15 to 20 years worth.

And time is not cheap.

The wild card in the deal was getting the donated organs. Without live organs, all the money in the world couldn't extend the artist's life.

So that's where Seth Winegar was at the end of June.

Now I'd like to tell you where he is three months later.

He's still in Pittsburgh. He's still in a holding pattern in an apartment around the corner from the Pittsburgh Medical Center.

But he has two new lungs and a new liver to keep him company.

The tide turned on Monday, July 31, when Seth was laid up in the hospital sick with a virus, gamely hanging on to life.

That morning, somewhere in America, a 20-year-old male took a bullet to the head and died.

The only bright spot in the tragedy was that the shooting victim had donated his organs in the case of his death and now that he was through with them, his lungs and liver were on the way to a 32-year-old Utah man who needed them badly.

At 5 a.m. Seth was told the organs were coming. By early afternoon the lungs were in place. By the next morning the liver was in.

A month later, at the end of August, he was out of the hospital.

Now, after a couple of weeks of out-patient rehabilitation, he's one lung checkup away from getting on an airplane and flying home to his studio in Kaysville.