Dr. Jack Russell Smardo, MD

Some background: My 74 year old mother-in-law had been ill for a few weeks (cold-like symptoms) and is a 30+ year diabetic. After an ER visit a couple weeks ago at Colorado Canyons in Fruita, they admitted her for a pneumonia diagnosis. She spent 4 days there, and was released prior to Christmas. At home she was not getting any better and unable to regain strength, so after a week at home she was readmitted to back into Colorado Canyons Hospital, and put into a "swing bed" for rehab and assisted recovery. On New Years day, Colorado Canyons transferred to St. Mary's, as her kidneys were reaching a life threatening failure stage. St. Mary's gave her 2 dialysis treatments during her first 24 hours there. Although she is 74 and her kidneys have been worsening in the last few years, I can't believe what Dr. Smardo said upon visiting her and speaking to her about advanced directive information. He told her that if she was his family member, he would let her die!!! That she was that… ill. What doctor says that to their patient? This negatively and extremely upset my MIL, which was not necessary. A nurse did overhear him and they were to report him to the head nurse, so I hope that was done and I'll be contacting the hospital's patient advocate to file a complaint. I just wanted to share this experience and hopefully whomever is reading this does not have a similar experience.