Boy Recovering After Liver Transplant : Medicine: The Ojai youth who had a tumor is out of surgery and asking for his heavy metal CDs. His family is optimistic.

A 14-year-old Ojai boy was recovering Saturday night from what family members hope is a life-saving liver transplant.

Aaron Clement underwent seven hours of surgery at UCLA Medical Center early Saturday to replace his cancerous liver with a healthy one from an anonymous Southern California donor.

Late Saturday, hospital officials said Aaron was in critical condition, typical for post-surgery transplant patients, in the medical center’s intensive care unit.

But Maria Turner, Aaron’s grandmother, said that by 6 p.m., the teen-ager was writing notes to his parents asking for his compact disc player and his heavy metal music.

“He’s listed in critical condition but I’ll tell you he is far from critical,” Turner said in a telephone interview from her Los Angeles hotel room. “We are absolutely elated. He is some kind of wonderful child.”

Doctors discovered more than a year ago that Aaron had a malignant tumor on his liver. His only chance of survival was a transplant, which required $100,000 just to get on the waiting list. Over the past five months, Ojai Valley residents have held bake sales, barbecues and other fund-raisers that generated $112,000 to save Aaron’s life.

Friday evening, Aaron got a call from UCLA Medical Center saying that a liver was available.

“You pray for a miracle and thank God when you finally get one,” Turner said.

By 10 p.m. he was undergoing a series of tests in preparation for the transplant. At 5 a.m., he was wheeled into surgery.

Family members feared that in addition to the liver transplant, doctors would have to remove parts of his gall bladder, pancreas and stomach because the cancer might have spread to those organs.

But Turner said Saturday that Dr. Ronald W. Busuttil, director of the Liver Transplant Center at UCLA Medical Center and the surgeon who performed the transplant operation, told the family that he took biopsies of the organs and that they had no traces of cancer.

“He has a brand-new beautiful liver,” Turner said. “The doctors said as far as they are concerned, he is cancer-free.”

Turner said Aaron will remain in intensive care from two weeks to 30 days, where doctors will monitor his progress and check for signs of the boy’s body rejecting the newly transplanted organ.

At Aaron’s Ojai residence, family members gathered Saturday to celebrate the good news.

“You’ve got one happy family over here,” said Aaron’s aunt, Dena Brooks of Ojai. “He came through the transplant just fine. He is doing wonderfully.”