Sporting events, bars and restaurants were teeming with life. And in Flavill’s homeland that day, the front pages of the newspapers were leading not with the spreading disease, but with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s announcement that he and his fiancé were expecting a child.
Weeks later, the world had come to a standstill. But everything that’s happened since March 1 has passed Flavill, even though he caught Covid-19 while unconscious.
Now the teenager is starting to come out of a 10-month coma – pleasing his family but confronts them with a new question: How do you explain a year like no other?
“When he gets out of here, life won’t be at all as he knows it,” Flavill’s aunt, Kate Yarbo, told CNN. “How do you describe it?
‘I think it’s going to be a shock. We’re all still processing it – I’m not sure you can ever really describe what this pandemic feels like. ‘
The family’s ordeal began just days before the swift onslaught of cancellations, fatalities, and lockdowns.
A cricket and hockey fan, Flavill was preparing to visit Buckingham Palace in May to receive the Duke of Edinburgh’s youth achievement award. But a collision with a car left him with a traumatic brain injury to the back of his head, and he was rushed to a hospital in Leicester, central England.
His mother is still waiting for it to be safe to touch her son, who is now recovering in a care home.
The pandemic has drastically affected Flavill’s hospital care, but it’s unclear if he understood his family’s explanation as to why.
“How scary is it to (have nurses) in PPE when you don’t understand what’s going on?” Yarbo asked.
“He will understand it only through our ability to describe it, and through news stories. The horror,” she said. “So many people have said it’s like watching a science fiction movie, isn’t it? You can’t write the pandemic like a movie. ‘
“That’s exactly how it will be for Joseph … never having to endure the fear and emotion we all had, because when you look at it later, hopefully much of the fear is gone.”
‘You want to hold his hand’
“He’s been in so much pain, he’s had seizures, it’s been a terribly traumatic journey for him,” said Yarbo. And then, in the past days and weeks, a breakthrough came.
First, Flavill smiled when audio was played recorded in the cockpit of an airplane. Then came a Zoom call with his aunt. ‘I joked with him that one day he will be able to talk and reminisce about our vacation in Cornwall. I said, ‘do you promise me your first word will be pasty? Yarbo said, referring to the famous Cornish pastry. “And then he blinked.”
‘Something just changed in my stomach. I said ‘did you blink your eyes on purpose? ‘and he blinked twice. Then we knew he was communicating. ‘
Since then his progress has been rapid.
“The past week has been incredible,” said Yarbo. “He can’t talk yet, but he’s clearly starting to get his limbs under control, and his sense of humor is there, he’s starting to laugh at jokes.”
“We are all really amazed, it is amazing what the brain can do.”
Flavill caught Covid-19 while in a coma, which left him without a vaccine, but he will soon be eligible for a shot, his aunt says.
His family have also discussed how to talk to him about the news from the past 10 months once he fully understands it.
“We are guided by personal feelings: did you know we weren’t there?” she said. ‘That’s a very important thing for his mom to manage emotionally, watching him through a screen. You want to hold his hand, you always want to be there. ‘
Flavill will be one of the few adults in the Western world who will learn about the pandemic secondhand. But he will also learn how far his family and friends have gone in their quest to communicate back with him.
His mother, Sharon, has received audio and video clips from benefactors to play for her son, some of which may have contributed to his progress, his aunt says.
And the family says they have another goal: to raise awareness of the impact of traumatic brain injury.
“The thing about Joe is that he was always such an energetic force. He’s the most determined person,” Yarbo said. “Who knows how far he will go now.”