James T

My name is James Crispin Tottle. I’m from Bath – well most of me – I don’t know where my heart’s from, because I’ve had a heart transplant, and I don’t know where it comes from. But I’m deeply thankful for that. And maybe I’ll never know.

In the last 10 years [since first meeting the artists] … it’s taken me a while to get used to having a heart transplant, which was then 9 nine years on from my transplant, which was in 1997. It just took me a while – because I don’t know my donor – I still don't know them now, and I find that a real struggle. When I first had my heart transplant, because of a major rejection, I was put on steroids, and I have bipolar disorder. Sadly I have a real struggle with bipolar disorder with being both manic, and also depressed – which isn't the best thing to happen to a heart transplant patient after you’ve been given new life, but I found it really hard, because at the same time I got divorced, which was really hard for me. [emotional pause].And also went to some mental hospitals, which weren’t easy. Made me pretty upset, so I’ve had a hard time for quite a few years.

But luckily I got through that, because of my donor, and just because of my Mum and Dad and my support and my son, and what I sort of spent my time doing is two things: I’m a very creative person, I always have been, all my life. I’m a cartoonist, I’m an animator, I’m also a writer.

In 2013, I met some fellow transplants – a liver transplant guy called Andy, and a kidney transplant guy called Daniel – and we formed a band called Gifted Organs, because that’s what we’ve been given. We’ve been given an organ, and an organ is a musical instrument – and it works, and it plays. And it inspired us to write a number of songs – got even more creative and wrote a song called Gift of Life: ‘My heart beats in time, like it was meant to be – like it was meant to….’ [emotional pause] Ah, sorry! Because after you have a transplant … I’m upset still … it’s been a bit of a slog, really, doing all this.

After you’ve had a heart transplant, you do have a new life, and it does work again, and it is amazing. Because beforehand, I had heart failure and I was dying, in the Royal United Hospital in Bath, where I live. And if it hadn’t been for the doctors and nurses helping me out, I wouldn’t have got through it. [emotional pause] And a lot … some people don't even sign up to heart transplants, because they just can't go through with it, because it takes some guts to do it.

Then I went to the Harefield, after this, and yet again it was the brilliant work of the transplant surgeons from all around the world who saved my life. And it also was the sad loss, you know, of somebody dying: I wrote another song about that called Restoration, which the Gifted Organs sang…

It’s all done and dusted,
in your hands and trusted;
You’re the key to my restoration.
From such loss you’ve helped me,
Led me to my sanctuary;
You’re the key to my restoration.

Because that’s what happened, you know? When I went through those doors at Harefield, you know, it’s all done and dusted, I couldn't do anything about it: I signed a dotted line, giving people permission, and then I had two ways it could happen – I could either go through and they’d save my life, or I’d be dead. So, it was all done and dusted. ‘In your hands and trusted’ is the hands of the surgeons, and the people that prayed a lot – I guess it’s God, if you believe in that type of thing. And finally, in the hands of somebody that’s saved my life, who’s not going be there anymore. And ‘You're the key to my restoration’, because they are the key to my restoration. Because I did so much afterwards; I’m still here, 19 years after this. And ‘From such loss you helped me’, because they did lose somebody – they never saw him again, when they turned the machine off [emotional]. I don’t know why I’m crying all these years later. I suppose it doesn’t help being divorced, and being on my own.