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Two years ago, Dr Kate Stone lay dying in a Highland forest after being gored in the neck by a stag.

Death felt inevitable but she stayed calm, counting her breaths, each one a small reprieve.

The stag had become trapped in the garden of the holiday home where she was staying at Lochailort, near Fort William, and it bolted for freedom as her friends opened the gate.

The frightened beast crashed into Kate and impaled her throat with its antlers, piercing her trachea and oesophagus.

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When she reflects on the incident now, the main theme is not anger or trauma but gratitude for a full recovery.

She said: “I expected to die. You don’t lie on the ground with your neck cut open like a character out of Game of Thrones and think you will be carrying on as normal.”

Amusingly, she refers to it as “stag-gate” and her “stagcident”.

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Kate added: “I didn’t really ever have fear. I am so happy with who I am and what I have done in my life that I was actually content to die.”

When the stag hit her and she fell to her knees, she admits that there was a surge of panic. But as an outdoor adventurer, she knew that it couldn’t be allowed to take hold.

Kate said: “I know from being in the outdoors, that the biggest killer is panic. The calmer you are, the more likely you are to reach safety.”

She was taken to the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow and placed in an induced coma.

In the coma, her imagination dropped her into another reality in World War III, where she was a secret agent being tortured as she fought to save the planet.

Kate woke up after a week but was still convinced she was a spy.

When she returned to reality, it was just as hard to grasp, lying in a bed in the high dependency

unit, unable to breathe independently, eat, talk, walk or think clearly.

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First, her memory came back “like a web page waiting to load”. Then her full compliment of cognitive and physical abilities returned.

She said: “As each skill returned, I just felt so glad, I didn’t concentrate on what I had lost – only on each thing that came back.”

Now, the only trace of the accident is a fading scar on her neck and her voice is a little hoarse sometimes.

What did threaten to crush Kate was the media coverage of the accident – the headlines that she read in her hospital bed that referred to the irrelevant fact that she is transgender.

One “expert” speaking on radio was asked: “Was Kate gored by a stag because she was transgender?’

When she first transitioned in 2007, her life was “absolute hell.”

Kate said: “Every single day I left my flat, somebody would shout abuse at me. One night, I found myself locked up by the police because of stuff that people had done to me.

“I’ve been thrown out of bars. People would pick ice out of their drinks and throw it at me while I sat in a bar.”

Transgender people don’t get hormone treatment in the first two years to be “sure” it is what they want, as if it would ever be a fleeting notion.

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Kate, 46, said: “It is a cruel system. For the first two years, you just look like a guy in a frock, a sad person in a shopping centre that everyone laughs at. It is a horrendous journey. It is not a choice.”

With her femininity assured and with patience, character and perseverance, she overcame that hostility until her talent, creativity and charm became the standout factors of the person she is.

Kate felt the headlines hurtled her back in time.

She said: “I was reduced to a headline and like everyone else, I am a person and I am not going to be reduced to a stereotype in some kind of bigoted way.

“I am a sum of all my achievements throughout my life. To me, being classified as transgender is as irrelevant as being classified by hair colour or skin colour. It was a dehumanising experience.”

Kate fought and won a battle to have the fact of being transgender considered irrelevant to any media coverage unless it is a key factor.

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She said: “To me, achieving that change was as big and transformative as the accident. It has given me

tremendous resolve that through calmness and kindness, we can overcome almost anything.”

Kate’s achievements are impressive and being gored by a stag is not the most notable event in her life.

At 20, she moved to Australia. In the outback, she herded 22,000 sheep on a 120,000-acre farm.

She studied electronics at Salford University, then a PHD in physics at Cambridge.

She is a creative scientist and inventor who is bringing the technology of the new to the crafted beauty of the old.

Her team at her company Novalia have made interactive record covers, books and posters.

Applications include a newspaper embedded with audio and video, a paper drum kit and set of DJ decks.

She has used the technology to create promotional material for Glasgow singer Be Charlotte. Kate created a cardboard box, drawn like a boom box, that played her music – perfect for sending to record executives.

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Kate also created an interactive digital album cover for US turntable artist DJ Qbert. And she makes

notebooks that play notes.

Her pioneering work sees her on magazine covers and stages talking to industry experts.

And she recently performed live with Funkadelic legend Bootsy Collins.

She said: “I create a digital soul and put them into everyday beautiful things that we are nostalgic about.

“I am kind of like the Mary Poppins of technology. Although we stare ahead to this dystopian future with lots of screens, I think what we will see will be more like Harry Potter or Mary Poppins – just beautiful old-fashioned things with technology making them magical.”