Pneumonia patient

whilst on rural prac, a man was admitted to the hosptial in his mid twenties with pneumonia. to complicate the situation the patient had a severe form of cerebral palsy, was unable to communicate, follow instructions and his muscles were so spastic that he was curled into a foetal position so effective positioning for airway clearance was virtually impossible. the family of the patient were desperat for the patient to be transfered to RPH because they had a younger son with CP who had also had pneumonia a few years earlier and ended up spending 3 months in RPH ICU as he got so sick. however, the doctors persuaded the parents to let the son stay for a while to see if the antibiotics helped and sent me a referral for chest physio to "beat the stuff out of his lungs". when i went to see the physio in the morning he was on 12L oxygen via a hudson mask, the oxygen was leaking out the mask into his eyes which were so sore he wouldnt open his eyes anymore. his sats were low 80s and there was no way to increase his oxygen as the hospital has no form of humidified oxygen or NIV. the patient's ches was so full of sputum that you could hear it gurglin in his throat, there were tactile secretions sternally and you could hardly hear air entry in the lungs due to the added sounds of sputum. the patient was too weak to take deep breaths/cough and unable to follow instructions. we tried nebs every half an hour to help loosen the secretions, percussion, vibes, positioning but nothing was improving the patient's condition. the parents were asking me if they should take their son to perth and even though i thought it was the only thing they could do i couldnt say it to them, i documented my findings and spoke to the ward coordinator that i was extremely worried about the patient and that he was getting exhausted due to WOB, the nurse agreed but said it was up to the doctor and he wanted to wait another 24 hours. maybe it was due to my prac in ICU but the only other option of treatment i could think of was a nasopharngeal tube to clear the secretions - this idea was rejected by the nurses in charge and i had noone to back me up. the patient ended up having to be air lifted to RPH as 2 o'clock that morning and is on full ventilator settings in ICU and the doctors have advised the parents to turn off the machine as too much damage has been done. does anyone have any ideas on how i could have treated this patient more effectively or communicated more effectively? my supervisor was not there that day and no other physios either. it was so frustrating knowing that i was being completely ineffective with this patient who needed much more experienced help than i could give and noone would listen to me, the doctor asked me to just "keep banging the crap out of him".