OKLAHOMA CITY (Dec. 25, 2020) – On a particularly awful night, his body wracked with pain during treatment for potentially fatal blood diseases, Trevor Norby's memories of playing golf on classic courses like St. Andrews and Carnoustie served as a needed distraction for the teenager.

Golf has been a constant for Norby – through his childhood health issues, a major life change in college and a global pandemic that could compromise his fragile immune system. 

Now 23 and a graduate student at Oklahoma Christian, Norby shows few outward signs of the physical battle he waged for a sizable portion of his childhood. He's a two-time NCAA Division II All-America athlete, who – despite his sometimes gruff exterior – has a soft heart and appreciation for both golf and those whose help along the way have allowed him to play it at a high level.

"It was definitely an interesting experience, but I wouldn't trade it for the world, to be honest with you," Norby said. "I grew up a lot during the process. I had a lot of priorities put straight really quickly. I know a lot of kids don't even realize their priorities until they turn 25."

OC coach David Lynn calls Norby's life story "mind-boggling, given the odds that he overcame. He's living in the hospital for months, getting pricked every day, chemotherapy, radiation – the whole deal. Trevor has one of the more unusual outlooks on life. I don't think that he's lost the appreciation for being healthy and getting the opportunity to play college golf, and how special that is, and go to school."

Norby comes from a golf family. His father, Ted Norby, is a longtime teaching pro who qualified for the U.S. Open in 1990 and the U.S. Senior Open in 2014. Trevor's uncle, Dennis Paulson, also played professionally, winning a PGA Tour event before serving in his current role as a broadcaster on PGA Tour Radio. Trevor grew up in Carlsbad, Calif., in the San Diego metropolitan area, where weather often is ideal for golf.

But golf wasn't Trevor's first love. Baseball was – at least until his health would no longer allow him to play. Wanting a competitive outlet, Trevor turned to golf. He wasn't necessarily overjoyed at the time, but "looking back, I'm kind of happy I made that decision."

The course of Trevor's life changed on Dec. 6, 2006, when doctors diagnosed the fourth-grader with a blood disorder known idiopathic aplastic anemia. According to the National Institutes of Health, aplastic anemia occurs when a person's bone marrow fails to make enough new blood cells. Those suffering from the disorder can experience fatigue, weakness, dizziness, infections and bleeding. In Trevor's case, the cause of the disorder wasn't known, hence the "idiopathic" designation.

Left untreated, aplastic anemia can be fatal. At minimum, it is a life-changing diagnosis, which is a lot for a 9-year-old to absorb.

"He did ask, that first night in the hospital, he asked me, 'Mom, am I going to die?' That's something I don't think any parent wants to hear," said Trevor's mother, Dawn Norby. "We've always told our kids we're never going to lie to him. I looked him straight in the eye and I said, 'Yes, honey, you are going to die, but this is not what's going to kill you.' He said, 'OK. Let's do it.' And that was the conversation."

Treatment soon after Trevor's diagnosis helped stabilize his condition. But a couple of years later, he began having more medical issues. He developed a secondary disease, paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria, better known by its initials, PNH. According to the Aplastic Anemia and MDS International Foundation, only about 500 cases of PNH are diagnosed annually in the U.S., with most of those being adults in their 30s or 40s.

PNH is considered a terminal disease – without a bone marrow transplant, Trevor had eight to 15 years to live.

"The chance of me getting aplastic anemia was about one in a million and then the chance of me getting the secondary disease after that is about .01 percent," Trevor said. "If there were any odds to be had, I was going to hit them."

Trevor initially didn't have a match for a bone marrow transplant. The Make-A-Wish Foundation, a nonprofit organization that tries to grant wishes of critically ill children, approached the Norbys, but at first they rebuffed the advances, figuring Trevor's condition wasn't as bad as others.

"We thought that was only for people who were really, really bad," Trevor said. "Little did we know, I guess being terminal was kind of bad."

Trevor told the Make-A-Wish representatives he'd like to play a round at famed Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia with his family. Unlike most organizations who readily work with Make-A-Wish, Augusta National refused the request, leaving Trevor with strong feelings about the club that annually hosts the Masters tournament.

Make-A-Wish asked Trevor for another wish. It also was golf-related – a trip to Scotland to play some British Open courses. Soon enough, in June 2011, the Norbys were on their way to the birthplace of golf, where Trevor and his dad played the Old Course at St. Andrews, the Carnoustie Championship Course and the first British Open course, Prestwick Golf Club.

"Part of what's awesome about Make-A-Wish is they give families an escape," Trevor said. "In my case … there was one time when I was going through something in the hospital and I was freaking out. I was having some surgery or something and it was really a bad night. Dad and I started talking about how we played certain golf holes at the Old Course, or what shot I would hit at Carnoustie or on 17, the par-3.

"It just got my head somewhere else. Dad and I were able to get out of a bad situation like that by thinking about something else. Whether they send a little kid to a Disney cruise or something, they at least get to create a memory that when you're going through hell later on, you can remember and look back on it and it's still kind of an escape."

Ted Norby has vivid memories of that night.

"We played golf in his head for hours," he said. "He was in agony. That was a really hard night. Just like anything, you get through it. It's horrible. I remember one of the days, I just broke down at work. … But I couldn't do that in front of him. You know that you've got to be strong for your kid as a parent."

Just before the trip to Scotland, the Norbys learned a bone marrow transplant match for Trevor had been found in Germany. In August 2011, he entered the hospital to prepare for the procedure, which occurred Aug. 16, after he'd undergone more chemotherapy and radiation treatments – a necessary procedure to kill his entire immune system before introducing the marrow donation.

"It's a waiting game once you get it, because you have to see whether or not your body is going to accept it or reject it," Trevor said. "Luckily for me, mine took pretty quickly. I was only in the hospital for another 3½ weeks. Even though it was hell, it was the least amount of hell I could possibly go through."

Trevor's life – upended by disease for years – didn't magically return to normal after the transplant. For his first three years of high school, he was on an independent-learning plan, meeting with a teacher a couple of times a week and receiving large packs of homework. That allowed his body extra time to heal.

Conveniently, it also gave him more time to play golf. He took full advantage, practicing upwards of seven hours a day. That practice eventually was rewarded with a scholarship to play college golf at a local NCAA Division I power, San Diego State. He redshirted his first season, then played two more for the Aztecs. His final event with the Aztecs was a NCAA regional tournament at Jimmie Austin OU Golf Club in Norman, Okla.

His childhood friend, Casey Rebmann, was on OC's team that season and made the short drive across the Oklahoma City metro area to watch Trevor, who told Rebmann he planned to transfer. Trevor had caddied for his father at the 2014 U.S. Senior Open, which was played at Oak Tree National in Edmond, Okla., so he was familiar with one of the Eagles' prime training courses. Trevor also knew former OC All-American Sam Johnston, who had received lessons from Ted Norby when Johnston lived in California.

One thing led to another, and sight unseen, Trevor transferred to OC before the 2018-19 academic year.

"It's really, really weird how you can have ties with a place you didn't even know existed," he said. "Somehow it just worked out."

Indeed. Now in his third season at OC, Trevor has won four tournaments and sank the clinching birdie putt to lift the Eagles to the 2019 Heartland Conference title. He made the Golf Coaches Association of America's third-team Division II All-America list and the first-team list last season. He had planned to serve as a graduate assistant in 2020-21, but when the NCAA offered all 2020 seniors an extra season of eligibility, he seized the opportunity to keep playing.

"He self-admittedly is not easy to be around at times," said Lynn, Trevor's coach. "But from a golf perspective, from his upbringing with his dad, he's probably got the highest golf IQ of any player I've ever coached. What I mean by 'golf IQ' is making the right decision from a strategy perspective – how to play golf, how to attack a golf course, when to be conservative, when to be aggressive, how to take emotions out of decisions and make smart, calculated, mathematic decisions. He's just extremely good at that. That's been ingrained in him since the first time he touched a golf club. That rubs off on teammates."

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Lynn said the Eagles have taken extra precautions to stay healthy, knowing Norby's health history puts him at heightened risk should he contract the virus.

"Obviously, that's something I'm extremely concerned about," Lynn said. "Our athletic training staff has been extremely concerned about Trevor's health and making sure he's protecting himself and taking necessary precautions. We as a team have tried to do that – not only for our own health, but for his health.

"The hangover effect his body has (from the chemo) – his nerves are frayed. He has many bodily aches and pains that normal 24-year-olds don't have to deal with. It's really impossible to trace those things."

Trevor is touched by his teammates' willingness to help protect his health.

"At the end of the day, all of us want to play golf," he said. "We all want to play golf so bad. We all know that if any of us get COVID, or any of us get sick, then we can't play golf. We're all just doing everything we possibly can to keep everybody healthy, and I know they're doing a little bit extra for me, which is awesome and I appreciate it."

Since his recovery, Trevor has worked with the San Diego Blood Bank and with other sick children and plans to work with Make-A-Wish in the future, Ted Norby said.

"The people you meet who just want to help you, it was amazing," Ted said. "I think that's kind of kicked into Trevor's head a little bit, too. He helps kids that want help. He's talked to a couple of little kids that were smaller than him going through this process. He's very empathetic now. He really is, because he's gone through this."

While it was a difficult experience to live through, Ted Norby said there was a purpose for it.

"It makes us who we are and a big part of it is it made Trevor who he is," he said. "It made us as a family stronger and better. You look back at bad stuff and sometimes good things can happen. That's the way we take it."