On March 1, 2020, when the 19-year-old was hit by a car in central England, the UK recorded only 23 cases of a new worrying virus. The vast majority of COVID-19 infections were still confined to China and the United States had confirmed only one death.
Sporting events, bars and restaurants were teeming with life. In Flavill’s home country that day, the front pages of the newspapers were leading not with the spread of the disease, but with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s announcement that he and his fiancee were expecting a child.
Weeks later, the world stopped, but everything that happened since March 1 passed through Flavill – although he caught COVID-19 while unconscious.
Now, the teenager has begun to emerge from a 10-month coma, exalting his family, but confronting them with a new question: how do you explain a year like no other?
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“When he gets out of this, life will not be as he knows it,” Flavill’s aunt, Kate Yarbo, told CNN. “How do you describe it? I think it will be a shock. We are all processing this, I’m not sure if you can really describe what this pandemic is like.”
The family’s ordeal began a few days before the rapid onslaught of cancellations, fatalities and blockages.
Flavill, a cricket and hockey fan, was preparing to visit Buckingham Palace in May to receive the Duke of Edinburgh Award for youth achievement. But a car collision left him with a traumatic brain injury to the back of his neck, and he was rushed to a hospital in Leicester, central England.
Three weeks later, Britain was locked up, which means that only his mother, Sharon Flavill, was allowed to visit him at the hospital from a distance, dressed from head to toe in protective gear.
“Life was suspended and then the blockade happened,” said Yarbo.
His mother still waits until it is safe to touch her son, who is now recovering in an asylum. The pandemic has dramatically affected Flavill’s hospital care, but it is not clear whether he understood his family’s explanations of why.
“How scary [have nurses] at PPE when you don’t understand what’s going on? “asked Yarbo.
“He will only understand it through our ability to describe it and through news. The horror,” she said. “So many people said it’s like sitting around watching a sci-fi movie, isn’t it? You couldn’t write the pandemic like a movie. That’s exactly what it’s going to be like for Joseph, never having to go through the fear and emotion that everyone we did, because when you look at it later, with luck, a lot of the fear will be gone. “
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‘You want to hold his hand’
The rest of the family spoke to Flavill virtually, trying everything they could to stimulate his brain through video and audio, with the help of relatives and friends through the Joseph’s Journey fundraising page.
“He is in a lot of pain, he had seizures, it was a horrible and traumatic journey for him,” said Yarbo. And then, in the past few days and weeks, there has been an advance.
First, Flavill smiled when he heard the audio recorded in the cabin of an airplane. Then there was a call from Zoom to his aunt. “I was joking with him that one day he could speak and remember our holidays in Cornwall. I said, ‘Will you promise me that your first word will be pasty?'” Yarbo said, referring to the famous Cornish Pasty. “And then he blinked. Something just spun in my belly. I said, ‘Did you blink on purpose?’ and he blinked twice. So we knew he was communicating. “
Since then, its progress has been rapid.
“The last week has been incredible,” said Yarbo. “He still can’t speak, but he’s clearly starting to gain control of his members, and his sense of humor is there, he’s starting to laugh at the jokes. We’re all really stunned, it’s amazing what the brain can do.”
Flavill caught COVID-19 while he was in a coma, which prevented him from receiving the vaccine, but he will soon be able to get a vaccine, says his aunt.
His family also discussed how to talk to him about the news from the past 10 months, once he is fully able to understand it.
“We will be guided by personal feelings: did you know that we were not there?” she said. “This is something important for your mother to manage emotionally, watching you through a screen. You want to hold your hand, you want to be there all the time.”
Flavill will be one of the few adults in the Western world to learn about the second-hand pandemic. But he will also learn how far his family and friends have gone in his quest to communicate with him again.
They raised about 33,000 ($ 45,000) to help with the costs associated with his care as soon as he leaves the hospital, many of whom are still unknown. “Nobody knows what the long-term impact will be, but we know that the journey can be long and expensive,” they wrote on their website.
His mother, Sharon, received audio and video clips from supporters to play for her son, some of which may have contributed to her progress, says her aunt. And the family said it has another goal – to raise awareness about the impact of traumatic brain injuries.
“What happens to Joe is that he has always been an energy force. He is the most determined person,” said Yarbo. “Who knows how far he is going now.”
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The video above is from an earlier story.