A 19-year-old from the UK has reportedly begun to emerge from a coma that lasted nearly a year, which means he has absolutely no idea about everything that happened over the bulk of 2020 – including the coronavirus pandemic.
The Guardian reports that Joseph Flavill went into a coma at the start of March last year, after he was hit by a car in England’s midlands and suffered a traumatic brain injury.
After slipping into the coma just weeks before Britain entered its first major lockdown, Joseph has started emerging from his stage 2 coma utterly unaware of everything that went down between March and now. The pandemic, the hard lockdowns, the US election, Brexit happening – the lot.
Joseph also apparently contracted and recovered from COVID-19 twice during his time in hospital, even though he’s been comatose through the bulk of the pandemic, which is just baffling. Imagine waking up nearly a year after an accident and finding out you were diagnosed with a virus that has killed hundreds of thousands, and you were just completely unaware of it all.
What’s most upsetting, however, is because of Britain’s current lockdown orders his family aren’t able to physically be with him as he slowly emerges from his coma.
Joseph’s aunt Sally Flavill Smith said they’ve tried explaining the situation to him over video chats, as he gains more awareness of his surroundings.
“When he’s awake in his room, he’s not going to have any idea why he’s there,” she told The Guardian.
“We do want to talk about it on the phone, and we try to make him aware that we really want to be there holding his hands, but we’re just unable to do it.
“But we try to keep it as simple as possible, we don’t really have the time to go into the pandemic hugely – it just doesn’t feel real does it? When he can actually have face-to-face contact, that will be the opportunity to actually try to explain to him what has happened.”
Even when his mum, Sharon, was able to actually visit him for his 19th birthday late last year after months of waiting to be with her son, she had to wear full PPE to see him.
Joseph hadn’t woken up from his coma by that point, so he wouldn’t have been absolutely bewildered by his mum visiting in a bloody hazmat suit, but I can only imagine how alarming it must be to have all your nurses visiting you kitted up in full personal protective gear.
I mean I know I wanted to sleep through 2020, but maybe not like this.
