Enoch Carter

I am Enoch Carter, a software developer. In 2019, I was mountain biking with my brother when an ATV came around a blind corner and hit me head-on. I was going downhill at about 30 miles per hour; the ATV was going about 60 in the opposite direction. I have no memory of the crash itself.

The collision broke all my ribs, smashed my lower spine, punctured my lungs and caused internal bleeding among other things. My brain injury, a brain shearing concussion, is similar to an extreme case of shaken baby syndrome. There was no direct impact to my head. Only the shock of the sudden reverse acceleration, which caused multiple brain bleeds which resulted in massive amnesia. I was put into a drug-induced coma, and later had steel reinforcements placed in my lower spine. Because of the spinal trauma, I now live with Arachnoiditis, a rare chronic pain condition in which nerves bind and pinch instead of gliding smoothly. For months, sitting was impossible. I could only stand or lie down.

The first memory I retained after the accident, I was in a dark hospital room, and my wife was in the bed next to me. I had already been awake and conversing with family for weeks, but this was the first awakening I could remember.

My memories did not feel like my own. They were scattered like puzzle pieces dumped on a table. Reassembling them has been an ongoing process ever since. I learned to gather fragments from the same time or place; a picture, a smell, a sound. I would ask others what else happened around that time, even if it did not seem related. Often, one detail would click, and more pieces would follow.

I came home in October 2019, just as COVID began its contagion. My wife and I were in the middle of selling our current house and building a new one. I lost my job in the tech downsizing, and because I had little memory of the work I had done previously , interviewing was nearly impossible. We lost the deposit on our new house.

I was unemployed for almost a year. There were nights I wondered why I was still here, and whether my family might have been better off without me. What kept me going was responsibility for my family. I was not ready to give up on them, even when I had nearly given up on myself.

All I knew was software, so I tried to relearn it. Shortly after I came home, I looked into an ongoing software project I had been working on before the accident. I had begun building software to synchronize information across distributed devices without a large central server, working on it in my own time so my job couldn’t claim it. I found the repository, reverse-engineered it, and spent months lying on my back in bed with a laptop, studying.

Programming was a bit like riding a bike. Part of me knew what needed to happen, like muscle memory. But when I tried to write the code, my mind would come up blank. I spent a lot of time on Stack Overflow, re learning basic coding syntax.

I finished my project, and then needed something else to keep me engaged. I was still unsure of my own capabilities. I needed to push myself, to learn my limits. I invented a smart automatic window controller called Windyble. I bought stepper motors, learned to control them with software, designed a printed circuit board, and built an app so I could open/close windows with my Android phone.

While I was waiting for a possible job offer from the Department of Defense, a job opportunity came up with a smart home company. I was offered that job, and an hour later, the Department of Defense offered me theirs. After nearly a year with no job, I suddenly had two job offers.

I chose the smart home job because it kept us near family and my children’s schools, rather than requiring a long distance move. And it was closer aligned with my current experience. Soon after, we found a house and secured it. After months of waking up to disappointment. I had lost my job, lost my house, lost all my memories. I essentially lost my life. I barely knew how to react to good news. For the first time in a long time I began to believe that good things can happen to me.

I have not been cured. The chronic pain from Arachnoiditis is still a daily battle, and recovery from a brain injury is not a straight line back to who you were.

Despite the Arachnoiditis and my traumatic brain injury, I am once again working full time and enjoying life. Thanks mostly to my amazing wife who stood by me the entire time and continues to make my life interesting.

Arachnoiditis and brain injury are lifelong struggles, but they are not life-ending ones. We are not just the sum of our accidents. We are the architects of what we build afterward.