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If you’re looking for an example of overcoming adversity, Victoria Oliver would be a good place to start. Despite coming within 48 hours of death and living with a hidden disability, she chooses to turn negatives into positives and make the most of any opportunities that come her way.
While I am conscious not to define Victoria by her medical history, it would be impossible to interview her without touching on the series of unfortunate events (to put it extremely lightly) which have shaped her life.
I anticipated discussing her diagnosis of Addison’s Disease, but I was surprised to learn that is not the only health Victoria lives with.
“I don’t think many people know that I am completely deaf in one ear, because I don’t often talk about it,” she said
“When I was three I had measles, even though I’d had my MMR jabs, and I was really sick. Although they can’t pinpoint it exactly, that’s when doctors think I lost all hearing in my left ear.”
Pictured: Victoria said that throughout her childhood she was "privileged in many respects".
Victoria said that she does not consider herself to have a disability.
“I try to normalise it as much as possible. The worst thing is that, when I tell people I’m deaf, they start talking differently,” she said.
“They start talking louder and slower. I 90% lip read and, as soon as people start changing the way they talk, I can’t understand what they’re saying because their lip movements aren’t normal.
“Because I lost my hearing at such a young year, it was when I was learning to speak so I didn’t notice that I was learning to lip read, it just happened. Because my hearing is completely fine in my other ear, it didn’t affect my speech.
“I have been told that, if you’re learning to lip read, the best way is to watch BBC News because they pronounce their words so clearly.”
Victoria said she has found some positives in being deaf in one ear included “not being able to hear [her] husband snoring”.
Victoria believes that she developed her positive, go-with-the-flow attitude while her family went sailing for close to four years during her childhood.
Pictured: Victoria graduated from Bristol University with a degree in business in property.
“You have to accept what you get. You can’t always predict what’s going to happen,” said Victoria.
“With sailing, you can make all the preparations you want, but anything can happen. I remember one time a shackle broke and the mast could potentially have fallen over and sunken the boat. It was my birthday so my birthday was effectively cancelled.
“You have to realise that you have to just go with things and hope and sometimes pray for the best.”
The story of Victoria’s family voyage is detailed in a book, “1 boat, 2 kids, 3 Oceans”, which was written by her father, Denis Wilkins.
“My dad wrote a journal while he was sailing and, when we returned to Guernsey, my parents decided it would be cool to turn it into a book for the future generations of our family,” she said.
“My brother, James, and I contributed bits that we could remember, my mum contributed her parts. My dad, who is so eloquent at writing, then put our stories into his words and made it lovely to read.”
Pictured: Victoria with her first-born daughter, Ruby.
Over the course of the journey, which Victoria said her dad would note was three-and-three-quarter years specifically, she and her brother were educated by their mum.
“Like so many of the sailing mums she just took it on and followed the curriculum of a correspondence course,” she said.
“I was so privileged in many respects. I got to experience so many different cultures and I learned to make friends very quickly.
“I picked up friends along the way. One I met in Singapore and she was bridesmaid at my wedding because we kept in correspondence all those years.
“I played with princes and princesses down to the local children who lived in mud huts. For me, they were all just kids but, even now, I really respected their different cultures.”
While most children develop a sense of their own culture from growing up in one place, Victoria said that her own culture was formed by her maternal grandmother.
“My grandma was Christian and we still attended churches some places, so that culture stayed with me,” she said.
“My grandma would send us care packages with letters for each of us and gifts. She also came out to see us when we were in New Zealand, because we were there for an extended period in order to miss the cyclone season."
Pictured: Victoria said both she and her husband love to travel and she takes every opportunity she can to see new places.
Victoria continued: “I was at school in New Zealand for three months and made a lot of good friends. We stayed pen pals for a long time until we went to university and it faded out.”
Victoria explained that she has come to appreciate family “so much more” after a close call with death in 2018.
“I was seriously sick and, after a catalogue of errors by the MSG, I came within 48 hours of passing away,” she said.
“I was so lucky that my mum had taken me to France for a trip because I was so ill on that trip that she realised that something was seriously wrong with me. I was sleeping 19 or 20 hours a day and couldn’t even pick up a glass of water.”
Victoria said that she first noticed feeling ill following the States’ assisted dying debate.
“I just thought that the debate must have taken a lot of me and that I must be really run down,” she said.
“By the end of the weekend, I was rushed to hospital with suspected meningitis and got worse and worse. I had some peaks and troughs but generally was not improving."
Pictured: Victoria with her twin daughters, Eliza and Cara.
“The antivirals I was given for the meningitis affected my liver and I went yellow and there were talks of a liver transplant. Then I was told that I had arthritis in all my joints. I was 35 and I could barely walk.”
Victoria ended up travelling to see a doctor in London, but she had been reluctant to go.
“I didn’t want to go because I was just too tired, but my mum dragged me there,” she said.
“I remember we climbed the stairs to an Airbnb and the host asked whether I needed help because I looked so ill.
“I looked like I’d been punched in both eyes. My gums were black and the creases on my palms we so dark it looked as though I had soil on me. I was sweating and barely able to stay awake.”
When Victoria got to the hospital, she had to ask her mum to explain her symptoms.
“I was so tired and I knew I wasn’t making much sense. Without my mum coming with me I don’t think I’d have made it,” she said.
“At hospital I was given 320ml of steroids to get me through the weekend. Initially I had been given 100ml, but it didn’t do anything. Within 40 minutes of the higher dose, my elbows weren’t as sore, I could walk a little bit more and the fog had lifted from my brain.”
Pictured: Victoria met her husband, Joe, while they were at university.
Victoria was diagnosed with Addison’s Disease, a disorder that occurs when your body doesn't produce enough of certain hormones. Blood tests which measure the levels of sodium, potassium and cortisol in the body are used to diagnose the disease.
“There was only one doctor in Guernsey who tested my cortisol level but, unfortunately, he then went away on holiday and the result was missed,” said Victoria.
“If those results had been looked at, I could have had three months of my life back.
“I made a formal complaint and they’ve since changed the system. It used to be the case that any blood test that wasn’t a standard tick box, went onto a different page. So, unless another doctor knew the test had been ordered, they wouldn’t know to look.
“The system made it really easy to miss things, but now the results are all in one place.”
Victoria said she was driven to make the complaint to help other people.
“I never wanted money or anything from the complaint, I wanted the system fixed because I didn’t want this happening to anyone else,” she said.
“I felt very determined to make sure no one else would go through the same thing.”
Pictured: Victoria said that her family life is "really busy" with a six-year-old and twin three-year-old daughters.
While she was sick, Victoria’s husband, Joe, looked after their first daughter, Ruby, who had been three at the time.
“Ruby didn’t understand what was happening. She hated coming to hospital to see me, which was upsetting as a mum, but I understood because I had so many lines in me,” she said.
“I hated the lines too. I remember there was one occasion where the nurse said they needed more blood. My line had fallen out in the night and I needed a new canular.
“I have very small veins and it took several attempts each time something was needed. I decided I didn’t want to go through it again, so I hid in the toilet.”
Unable to find Victoria, staff called her mum.
“My mum phoned me and asked where I was and I had to admit that I was hiding. My husband then came to the hospital and I just run out the bathroom crying,” she said.
“I have to say, through the whole experience, the nurses were fantastic. Nothing was ever too much for them. They looked after me and even they were trying to advocate for me in the end.”
Pictured: With a sailing background, Victoria said she has always loved being close to the sea.
After recovering from her ill health and, with her Addison’s under control with the prescription of daily steroids, Victoria and Joe were in for another shock.
“I had been told by two different doctor’s that I couldn’t have any more children after my first. When I fell pregnant it was a ‘let’s rule it out’ scenario so, when the test came back positive, it was a ‘wow’ moment,” she said.
“Joe was over the moon because he’d always wanted another child; he was so excited.
“The doctors were sceptical and told us not to get our hopes up. I had already had a miscarriage, which I don’t mind people knowing because so many people go through it.
“Along with the Addison’s, the medical staff didn’t think I’d be able to carry this next child.”
When Victoria went for her first ultrasound, she recalls seeing her husband’s face “go grey”.
“I asked if something had gone wrong with the pregnancy, but it turned out I was carrying twins. I was due to travel away for Christmas that night, but they rushed me to see Dr Hopkins, who was the twin specialist,” she said.
Pictured: Victoria married Joe in 2011, after meeting in 2003.
Victoria continued: “I asked him [Dr Hopkins] what date I’d be having the babies. He said not to get ahead of ourselves, but I was determined to know the date. He said it would be 6 June.
“I never thought that I would lose them, I had 6 June in my head and I thought ‘that’s that’.
“At 25 weeks, Dr Hopkins said the twins were viable and he seemed surprised. In his mind that’s when he was confident, but I had known before. I don’t know if it was sheer determination or what, but I knew it was going to be fine.”
Victoria’s twin girls, Eliza and Cara are now three and Ruby is seven.
“I couldn’t do what I do without Joe. Our family life is really busy but we each know our assignments and we divide and conquer,” she said.
Victoria met Joe at Bristol University during the Rugby World Cup in 2003.
“I was let into a friend’s house and there was this big, tall guy on the stairs in a red dressing gown and I said he should take me to lunch. He took me out on a lunch date and the rest is history,” said Victoria.
“Joe always says that I’m his rock and the stability to the household. While I was ill he was left with a three-year-old and was also going through difficulties at work and eventually resigned."
Pictured: Victoria said one of her favourite things to do is spend the weekend in Herm with her family on their boat.
Victoria continued: “When I got back from London, he was incredibly stressed and I said he needed some time off. I told him to use the time to build me a pond.
“I always try and turn negatives into positives. Joe eventually thanked me and said that it was what he needed. It might have been more luck that judgment on my part, but it worked.”
It is clear that family is important to Victoria. Her cousin, Andrew Le Page, is currently a contestant on the ITV hit show, Love Island.
“I had seen Love Island before because, when I was a sick, a friend of mine told me to watch it because, if I were to fall asleep during an episode, he said I wouldn’t need to recap to figure out what was going on in the next episode,” she said.
“Andrew and I are quite close cousins and would go skiing together as children. It’s weird seeing him and it’s a side of him that I wouldn’t ordinarily see.
“He’s being more reserved than I know him to be. Usually, he’s very outgoing but I don’t think that’s coming across on the show.”
Pictured: Victoria said that she couldn't do all that she does without her husband, Joe.
It is easy to believe that Andrew has an outgoing personality if he is anything like Victoria. When asking about her career, it was clear that she has always been open to new opportunities.
“All my friends were taking a gap year before university and my dad said I wouldn’t be swanning about in Australia, because I’d already done that. He said I could take a gap year but that I needed to use it to figure out what I wanted to do,” she said.
“I got a job in telesales, in part because I wanted to be rebellious and I knew my dad would hate it. I was very good at it, but I hated every minute.
“A lot of my friends were going into marketing so I did a week at a PR company. I really liked the photography but I hated the writing because I’m dyslexic.
“I then got a job in quantity surveying and it was only meant to be a one-week work experience placement, but I spent three months there. They offered to pay for my university to do quantity surveying, but I wasn’t sure what route I wanted to go down.”
Victoria eventually decided on a degree in ‘business in property’, which pulled together the aspects she had enjoyed from her different work experience placements.
“I would have never picked that degree without those placements because I had been so set on doing marketing,” she said.
Pictured: Victoria is pleased to be able to raise her children around boats, echoing her own childhood experiences.
After her degree, a rather bold Victoria, applied for a job that didn’t exist with a local property company.
“I simply said “you need me”. Of course, the questioned why and I explained that they were the only business which didn’t have a graduate, and they took me on after that,” she said.
“Victoria completed her Assessment of Professional Competence (APC) qualification, which involved stints in planning, investment, management and agency work.
“As soon as I got my APC, I worked in retail lettings but I was always classified as “the graduate” and I could never get around that. I moved jobs and decided to specialise in lease consultancy because everybody said that it was a good grounding.”
Victoria also has a charitable side, raising £250,000 in one year as Chair of the corporate social responsibility team at her work. The funds were donated to Julian’s House, a homeless charity in Bristol.
Victoria said that she is open to career changes, although specified that she is happy to take “calculated risks”, rather than jumping into things blindly.
“My dad is a property developer, but he started off as a mechanic and running garages. When we went sailing he realised that it was easier to let out the garages than run them,” she said.
“He has been a good example of a career changing over time. It is said that your career will change roughly eight times. Whether I go back to surveying one day or do something different, there are always opportunities that come around that you’re not expecting.”
Pictured: Victoria said that her outlook on life changed after her close call with death in 2018.
Victoria said that she is not someone who enjoys planning.
“I hate planning because I think if you plan everything then you miss some good things that might crop up,” she said.
“My friend, Hannah, plans everything to a T. She calls me her spontaneous friend because I jump in with two feet and just see what happens.”
While Victoria’s life is very much always-on-the-go, she said she does take time to relax.
“Something that I learned from being ill is knowing when to say that I need to take some downtime,” she said.
“One of my favourite things to do is take the boat to Herm and spend the weekend in the harbour with the boat crew.
“The kids are so safe there and it’s somewhere I can really relax and unwind. It’s a reset for me; after just a weekend I feel as though I’ve been away for a week.
“We are so lucky to have Herm on our doorstep. I know that some people say there is nothing to do here, but there is always something going on that you can usually attend for free.”
Pictured: Victoria said that she hopes her daughters "do whatever they'd like to do" when they grow up.
After spending a considerable amount of her childhood at sea, to spending part of her adulthood in a city, I asked Victoria whether she preferred life on land or on the water.
“I love life on an island because you get the best of both worlds,” she said.
“One of the few things I didn’t like about living in Bristol was that I missed the sea. There is something so romantic about listening to the waves, even in our house we have a pond with a fountain because I love hearing the water.
“Perhaps because of sailing, there is something so comforting to me in hearing water and I will always appreciate it.”
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