Beesley’s Point resident Ed Price was spending time at his Florida home about two years ago when he suddenly collapsed and fell into a coma. When he came out of it eight days later, he learned he had suffered a life-threatening injury that required multiple surgeries to fix.
Price, then 64, had undergone a craniotomy, the removal of a portion of his skull, while he was in the coma, and he eventually had four more brain surgeries.
Fast forwarding, the surgeries went well, and after about a year he was back in Florida, and back to playing tennis.
Meanwhile, employees at his computer company, well aware of all the issues their boss was facing, decided during his recovery to develop a website to help people understand the sometimes complicated language of medical reports.
“They worked on it while I was napping,” Price said.
He said the website gives people a greater sense of control over their medical choices. And, perhaps most importantly, it provides questions for each person to ask their doctor concerning their condition.
Price’s story begins on Feb. 23, 2023, the day after he played tennis with friends. He got out of bed and fell to the floor.
“I had a friend coming down to see me, and no one could find me,” he said.
Someone called his wife, who was working in Atlantic City, to tell her his friends couldn’t locate him. She told them she had not heard from him, and some people in the complex started looking for him. Neighbors got access to his unit and searched the house but did not find him right away.
Eventually, someone said, “I found him!” He had apparently crawled under the bed and lost consciousness.
They called 911 and he was transported to the hospital, where he did not wake up for eight days.
There he learned he had the craniotomy, to relieve bleeding on the brain. It was the beginning of his series of brain surgeries, but they did not start immediately.
Price was suffering from what seemed to be a stroke for the next four months before he had an appointment with Dr. David Stidd, an Atlantic City neurosurgeon, who told him he needed a procedure to be done in 48 to 72 hours, or he risked becoming a vegetable.
“He told me, ‘You need relief, or you won’t make it,’” Price said.
Surgery was scheduled for the following day to repair the injury.
So how did things get to that point? Doctors found evidence of an old head injury, and the news jarred Price’s memory, going back to 1981, when he was in college at the University of Delaware in Newark.
He said he was attacked by a man with a baseball bat who had been attacking women on campus. For whatever reason, the guy turned on him and broke the window of his car and struck him in the face.
In 2023, the doctors could not tell him what caused his episode that year. All Price knew was that the surgeries went well, and after about a year, he was back in Florida, and back to playing tennis. He said almost all his friends welcomed him back, but one guy seemed a little standoffish.
“The guy wouldn’t talk to me, then one day he catches me and said, ‘Do you remember what happened a year ago?’”
Price said he honestly didn’t remember a thing related to his brain injury. The guy, who hit a tennis ball harder than anyone Price had ever seen, had hit a ball that struck Price in the head.
“Do you remember getting hit in the face?” the guy asked.
Price did not remember that, or bleeding profusely. Nor did he recall that he had been hit in the head with a tennis ball twice, about a week apart. About two weeks later he collapsed with bleeding on the brain.
He said he had no brain scan in 1981 after being struck with the bat. Scans taken in 2023 showed his brain had shifted inside his skull. There is a butterfly-shaped area that is visible on the scans, which should be in the middle of the back part of the skull.
On Price’s scan, the butterfly image was shifted, suggesting his brain was off-center. He said after being treated, his brain is where it should be.
Price is back to running his company, Computer Service & Support, Inc. But as he was being treated and given physical and occupational therapy, there was a question of how long his treatment would take.
His employees, who were made well aware of the medical issues their boss was facing, as if he was coming back from a stroke, developed a website called interpretmyresults.com. The site, which its developers stress does not replace the doctor and medical staff, will interpret test results for patients.
Medical test results are written in medical terms that are often hard to understand; Price said he wished he had a computer program that could “tell me more” than the printed results.
“We can do that,” his staff said.
For part of his recovery time, Price was unable to talk, he could not move his right hand, and he was on a lot of drugs. At one point he had to go through surgery to remove blood that had pooled on his brain, and he spent time in a rehabilitation center learning how to walk again and do other things.
As he went through all this, his staff continued to work on the website. One member of the staff, Jim Nouragas, said the site was originally very rudimentary, but as time went on he realized this was something a lot of people could use.
“The decision was made to release this to the public,” he said. “And we never would have done this without a catalyst.”
He said people are apt to Google something they don’t know about their medical condition or test results.
“I think when people Google something what they get back are the worst-case scenarios,” Nouragas said. “This site gives them other alternatives than simply the worst.”
Users will, for a small fee, be able to upload their lab results, for example, in a PDF form or image, to get an interpretation. They will be able to familiarize themselves with reports in order to ask questions. The AI-generated reports cost the user $2.99 per report.
“This thing is really good for people who don’t know what to ask,” Nouragas said.
Price said: “I’m really proud of what my crew has done.”
Contact the reporter, Christopher South, at csouth@cmcherald.com or call 609-886-8600, ext. 128.
