Illusionist Brian Michaels can saw his wife in half, pluck a dove from thin air and turn a five-dollar bill into a C-note.

But even he couldn't conjure up a pair of lungs.

That particular trick required the magic of modern medicine and the wizardry of an organ transplant team who made Brian's diseased lungs vanish during an intense eight-hour performance two years ago.

Presto change-o, a new man appeared, a re-energized man who could waterski, blow bubbles with his daughter and return to the stage, a man who could breathe.

"I usually run up the stairs now," he says, "because I can."

Brian was three months old when he was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a fatal, incurable, genetic disorder that attacks the lungs and digestive system. As a kid, he dreamed of growing up to be a professional magician; his parents, Ray and Jackie, simply dreamed of him growing up.

In the late 1930s, when the disease was first identified, most of its young victims didn't live long enough to go to kindergarten. In 2006, for the first time, more than half of all Canadians with CF were 18 years or older and are expected to live at least into their 30s.

At 34, the Burlington dad has already exceeded his original life expectancy. And now that he has jettisoned the lungs that one surgeon called the worst he'd ever seen, he looks forward to a life he never thought he'd have.

It comes at a price, though. There is nothing illusory about the sobering reality of his new-found future. And the truth is that Brian is one of a few people lucky enough to have experienced the magic of an organ transplant. Canada has a poor record when it comes to organ donations, and the transplant waiting list has grown enormously in the past decade.

"On the evening of July 5," he wrote in an e-mail announcing the success of his surgery, "somewhere a family lost a loved one and, in their darkest hour, made the decision to give me and others a chance at a brand new life. I can't think of a more loving, courageous gift ... I only wish they could be comforted by the fact that their gift is a miracle in progress."

Miracle indeed. Secrets may be Brian's stock in trade, but he will never know the mysteries of this ultimate magic act -- or who supplied the essential props.

All he knows is that four months and 12 days after his name was placed on the organ recipient waiting list, life began again.

It was just before midnight on July 5, 2006. Wife Carrie, his partner in parenthood and prestidigitation, had helped him with his bedtime routine -- starting his intravenous antibiotics, hooking up his feeding tube, and starting the ventilator that helped him breathe -- and was asleep in another room.

Brian had just brushed his teeth when the phone rang.

"We think we've got suitable lungs for you," said the voice from Toronto General Hospital, a world leader in lung transplantation.

"I was in complete shock. I sat there for about 20 minutes."

While Carrie alerted the neighbour on standby for babysitting and urged her husband to hurry up, Brian digested the very real possibility that he might never return to his home, that he might be kissing his baby girl goodbye forever. That this might be it.

The delicate procedure began at 8 a.m. in an operating room at TGH and was over by 4:30 in the afternoon. Brian was so zonked out on drugs that the first few days post-surgery are something of a blur ... although he vaguely recalls talking up his website to one of the nurses. Carrie, on the other hand, clearly remembers the frightening array of tubes and pumps and machines that monitored the man she met and fell in love with while both were studying business at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Although his future was uncertain, Brian always believed he would have one. Despite the grim prognosis, he plunged into life with enthusiasm and energy.

"He was a happy little baby," says mother Jackie, now a grandmother of three. "He was cranky sometimes because he wasn't getting enough to eat."

(Because of its effects on the pancreas, the disease prevents proper digestion and delivery of nutrients to the body.)

His first visit to the doctor revealed that he wasn't gaining weight and was, in fact, losing. A nurse who bent down to kiss him immediately detected the telltale salty taste of his skin. (Until genetic testing was developed, a sweat test to measure salt levels was the gold standard in diagnosing CF.)

Thus began the family's frightening journey into uncertainty. Ray and Jackie were told to enjoy the next couple of years because that's probably all they were going to get. Every day, twice a day, Brian's parents performed rigorous manual chest therapy to loosen the guck from his lungs. Eventually he switched to a PEP (positive expiratory pressure) mask. Handfuls of enzymes help to digest the food.

"We always treated him normally," says Jackie. "We never held him back from doing anything. The more activity people with CF do, the better."

He was a scrawny kid, who caught the usual childhood illnesses and colds, but he played baseball, swam, joined Cubs and Beavers and Scouts, played hockey, went camping with the family, skied on water and downhill -- and discovered magic.

"I was in Grade 5, library period, and I was goofing around," the former St. Gabriel's elementary and Notre Dame secondary schools student admits. "The teacher said 'You'd better get out a book or you're not going out for recess,' so I grabbed a book. It was So You Want To Be A Magician by Lawrence B. White."

He started doing tricks with cards, coins, his mom's dustcloths. He convinced his parents to take him to a magic store in Toronto where he spent $100 of his own money on magic supplies. At 15, he was averaging six parties a week, and by university, he'd given up being an optometrist because the only science that interested him was the science of magic.

But there was no way to make the CF disappear.

Brian was doing his best to stay healthy, but his lung function was slowly, steadily, predictably declining. He was hospitalized for the first time around 19 after blowing up 40 balloon animals.

"I knew what the statistics were, but I felt so good. Carrie calls it being 'in denial,'" he says with a laugh. "I like to call it overwhelming optimism. I felt that if I acted like I didn't have CF and didn't dwell on it, everything would be OK.

"I had to believe I was healthy. I lived like I was happy."

On Jan. 2, 2006, his lungs simply packed it in. He couldn't breathe and was rushed to emergency. The crisis was so acute the family began tentative funeral plans.

It was a month before he was stable enough to endure the investigation that would determine his suitability for transplant. Even so, the week of "gruelling" tests just about finished him off. He spent a total of seven weeks at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, which has the largest adult CF care program in North America.

His name went on "the list" in late February and he went home to wait an anticipated nine to 12 months. The family had no income and an 18-month-old to care for. They put his oxygen concentrator in her toy room. Carrie could find him anywhere in the house by following the 30-foot oxygen tube.

And then, 4 1/2 months later, that phone call.

"For years, I'd read about transplants but I always felt I'd rather have my own lungs," he says. Still, having someone else's lungs in his chest doesn't feel much different physiologically, but sometimes the emotion of it is overwhelming.

"I think about that person and their family, about them making the decision to give the gift of life. I'm so grateful, even when I'm just in the mall."

Brian is on a steady dose of immuno-suppressants to head off rejection, and enzymes to do what his pancreas doesn't. Infection could cause serious problems so nobody wears shoes in the house; a Purell dispenser sits at the door.

Sydney is at preschool now and Brian and Carrie are back to a full schedule of 60 to 80 shows a year for corporate events, annual meetings, galas and company parties. This year, they spent a week skiing and visited Disneyland.

"I'm so lucky," says the man with ILLUSION on his licence plates. "Life's just about perfect."

mnolan@thespec.com

905-526-4689