The Skileses are settling back to their normal lives after Nolan, 12, saved his mother’s life with CPR. From left are Marcus, Nolan, Kristy and Rachel Skiles.
Photo by Hannah CampbellMothers are typically thought of as protectors for their children, but a Ringgold family recently switched up the status quo when 12-year-old Nolan Skiles saved his mother’s life with CPR.
“That’s my boy,” said Kristy Skiles. “If I didn’t think that boy walked on water before, I sure do now.”
Nolan, who has never taken a proper CPR class, will take a certification class Jan. 8 at Boynton United Methodist Church, where his family attends.
“If this ever happens again I’ll be licensed, and maybe a little bit more prepared,” Nolan said.
His parents, who both work in the medical field, say he must have learned CPR by observation – television shows and random discussions.
“It’s a skill that all people need to have, really,” said Kristy Skiles, an operating room nurse at Parkridge East Hospital. She said children as young as 9 or 10 should take classes. “You just never know,” she said.
Ordinarily Nolan would have been roaming the neighborhood with friends, but he was home that lazy afternoon during Christmas vacation when his mother, who has an autoimmune disease affecting her organs, started “guppy breathing,” gasping for air, and passed out.
Nolan called his dad, who told him he’d have to breathe for her until the ambulance arrived. The whole time he was administering CPR, Nolan said he was thinking, “Why is this happening and will that ambulance hurry up?”
His father, Marcus Skiles, a physical therapy assistant and rehabilitation director at Heritage Health Care in Fort Oglethorpe, rushed home to meet the ambulance.
“I probably broke every driving law,” he said – driving 105 mph in the medians with flashers and horn in full effect, though he said there were no close calls. “It’s almost like everything around me stopped,” he said.
Meanwhile Nolan had passed his CPR duties to his neighbor Vickie Terry, whose granddaughter, a friend of his sister Rachel, had run to get her.
The ambulance did arrive and while the emergency medical technicians did their jobs, Nolan said, “I was outside yelling and praying to God.”
Marcus Skiles said with tears in his eyes that he’s seen a patient, a friend of his, die, but “it wasn’t the same as seeing her laying there.”
Parkridge doctors, anesthetists and nurses who’d gotten to know Kristy Skiles during her 16 years there were waiting when they arrived at the hospital.
“I don’t have words,” Kristy Skiles said. “They are the best group of people you would ever hope to be around. I owe them big. I don’t even know how to repay.”
The Skileses have had three weeks to settle “back to normal” – for Nolan that’s eating chicken tacos for supper, participating in the gifted program at Heritage Middle School where he plays saxophone in the band, and playing basketball, baseball and football with the Boynton Recreation program.
“I’m just grateful the little bugger was here,” Kristy Skiles said.