Yesterday, he was joking with his wife, Sharon, strolling along Hampden beach, and telling of the heroics of surgeons who saved his life in a rare operation at Auckland City Hospital.
Mr Shaw (60) remembers the time and date - 5.30pm on July 14 - that he was told a liver donor had been found, after he had spent two weeks with his family preparing for his death.
Two teams of surgeons worked for more than 13 hours to transplant a liver and install a mechanical valve in his heart.
The organs were ruined by a life of "living in the fast lane".
"It is the alcohol that buggered my liver and the smoking that buggered my heart," he said.
Staff at Auckland City Hospital told Mr Shaw before he went into the operating theatre that his surgery was unusual and there was a chance he would not survive it.
"I told them I had had a fairly good innings and that I had already crammed 80 years into my 60 years."
The problems started for Mr Shaw about six years ago, when he was living in Australia.
"I was working hard and drinking hard.
"My doctor told me I had to slow down, but I didn't listen to him."
Weeks later, he had a massive stroke, leaving him temporarily paralysed, he said.
The first stroke was followed by minor strokes and a diagnosis of cirrhosis of the liver.
On returning to New Zealand, he went to live in Palmerston and started to renovate his house.
His health deteriorated and he was admitted to Dunedin Hospital.
He could walk only a few metres, did not know what he was doing in the hospital or who people, such as his wife of 15 years, were.
In October last year, he was told he only had a couple of months to live, he said.
But, in December, he had a call from a specialist in Auckland who said Mr Shaw and his wife had been booked on a flight north and that doctors were prepared to do tests to see whether they could operate on him.
He spent the next six months living in Transplant House, waiting for a donor.
Before the transplant, he had got so weak he had difficulty walking.
Since the operation, doctors had given Mr Shaw an estimate of 20 years of life, he said.
Mrs Shaw said her husband was getting "brighter and brighter, in every way" each day.
The couple have many plans, including spending time with their children, and continuing their home renovations.
Mr Shaw is also going to take his old liver, which has been packaged in plastic, to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to try to warn others of the dangers of drinking.
When asked what it was like to have her husband back from the brink and possibly with her for 20 more years, Mrs Shaw said: "It is going to be heaven."
