"We did not know my dad's wishes"

Dad fell and broke his hip at home December. He was taken into Raigmore and operated on a couple of days later. The night before his operation I'd been visiting him and just as I left one of the Ward Doctors (I can never remember the proper name) asked me about dad and resuscitation. Now dad could be fairly irascible and single minded about life so I told the Doctor that really they should ask dad. He was of sound mind and would have no qualms about letting them know his mind.

Anyway, two days later, after a successful operation, dad aspirated and was resuscitated after being down for 6 minutes. I was called and rushed to the hospital. He'd been taken to ITU and kept sedated as he was on a ventilator. I asked then about his resuscitation wishes only to discover that the Ward Doctor had failed to have the conversation with dad before he went for his operation. After a couple of days it became obvious that his kidneys had failed and as his family we had to take some tough decisions. The level of sedation was reduced and he gained consciousness although because of the ventilator he was unable to speak with us. Crap.

Different outcomes were laid out for us by consultants and as a family we took the decision to switch off his ventilator and he passed away within a couple of hours. It would have been so much better if that Ward Doctor had carried through and had the conversation with dad as to this day I still don't know if we did the right thing.

On a plus point, the nurses in ITU were superb, nothing was too much trouble and they arranged to have a CD player beside his bed so we could play all his favourite teuchy music CDs for his last wee while in this world.