Why didn't I think of that???

So this week has been a busy week. And emotional. My mom had her 2nd surgery on her hip cause it kept coming out. She did great, next day great, next day she can't breath and is send to the ICU on a machine that helps her to breath. Not quite a ventilator, but just short of that. The doctor is talking about code status, which in lay man's terms means, 'she's not doing great, probably won't make it through all this, so do we really want to intubate and go through cpr'. In short, she's ended up doing ok, they put a chest tube in to drain the fluid around her lungs which was causing her to not breath well and things are looking up. Now, what's really got me thinking now is why the nurses and doctors didn't do some things, or do them quicker, and why I didn't push for it. I'm at work as I write this, and a patient on our floor is having a difficult time breathing. Our nurses are so quick to call doctors and run a bunch of tests to help this pt so he does not worsen. First they never (to my knowledge, all the nurses say no) did a CT scan of my mom's chest. I won't get too into it, but this to me is a huge mistake as it may very well be that she threw a PE (got a clot in her lungs from her recent surgery) And it frustrates me cause I too kept forgetting to talk to the doctor about it. Second, why didn't they decide to put the chest tube earlier?? If they did a CXR that showed she had fluid surrounding her lungs, why didn't they quickly do something about that?? And why didn't I push for it? Ugh. I know emotions get in a way of critical thinking, but where was my brain??? Better yet, where were the nurses brains who were getting paid to think?!?!?!