Norma's story; 'This is my reality.'

Kate: So we're on episode four now of this podcast, which is called Realistic Medicine.  What? Why? How? And we're really be lucky today to have Norma Davidson with us, who is a resident here in the Highlands and has been a patient and a member of the community and is a really prominent member of the Highland Senior Citizens Network. And so Norma is going to kindly share some of her story with us today, which will be really helpful. So, welcome, Norma. Thanks so much for joining us. Tell me a little bit about yourself.Norma: Well, first of all, you've already introduced what my name is, so the first is I grew up in the Highlands of Scotland, all over, but I ran away from home when I was 14 and pretended I was 16 and joined the QARANC, Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps in England. And from there I took ill when I was in the army and they had to do the very first operation on me that I'd ever had in my life, where they found I suffered from anaphylactic reactions to many anesthetic drugs. So under British law, you couldn't be in an armed forces with that because you'd be a danger. So I threw a dart into an atlas and it landed in a country called Rhodesia. So I packed up everything and just went to Africa. When I got there, I joined their military, which was combined forces, but carried on with nursing training and we would work with casualties, evacuating people out. I learned to fly an airplane and land it in case the pilots got shot, because this was a wartorn country. And this carried on to about the late 1970s. And then in 1979, I hit a landmine where everything changed because it was then found I became an incomplete quadriplegic. After everything settled down, I can move sometimes. I've got no sensation in a lot of parts of me. Every time I take an anaphylactic reaction, it causes swelling in the body and when that swells up, it also seems to cause problems in my spine as well. And it can take me ages to start getting movement back after each episode has gone, been cleared and I'm out of ICU. Can take months. I eventually got transferred back to Britain in 1986 and that was when local NHS and things got involved, because, yes, I was an incomplete quadriplegic and it's a CTC five. But I shouldn't be defined. That doesn't define me, who I am, it's what I can achieve. But then I was taking anaphylactic reactions to everything around me. I was in one hospital for 90 times in one year with anaphylactic reactions. So it was decided they were going to try and work out what was causing this. And they realized that I had what was called hereditary idiopathic and acquired angioedema, which all turned into anaphylactic reactions. The physical side of me, the disability, I can cope with. But that's the side that takes over everything, because you go to hospital, you'll take a reaction when you go through the door. Doesn't matter what you were going in for, they deal with the reaction get you out, realize, oh, we haven't done tests, we haven't done anything. I had a fantastic doctor later on who then took over and said, we've got to work a plan because I was falling through cracks.  And we then started with a different way of keeping me all together. And that's just roughly, in a nutshell, probably 40 years all come together.Kate: Wow. What a fascinating journey you've had. And then what do you enjoy doing in life now back in the Highlands?Norma: Anything that, as you can see, I like activities, I like action. Doesn't matter what it is. I like to be a dare devil. I've always been a dare devil. So even now, even in my wheelchair and everything else, as people in the Highland Senior Citizens Network know, one of their staff is traumatized. When a few years ago, with NHS, we had people from NHS and the government, but I decided I wanted to go to the skate park in my wheelchair and they did a film for NHS and I did it. And I finally got to the very top of the park, which nobody's ever done in the wheelchair