Experiences with Pleurex Catheter (lung tap)

Hi everybody--

My mom had a really rough summer, but things have been looking up for the last few weeks. She had a recurrence to the skin and it seemed that the lymphedema that presented was due to the recurrence of cancer. They also found about 3 liters of fluid in the lining of her lung on the unaffected side. She's currently on Eribulin and her tumor markers dropped from close to 200 to about 40 with 3 treatments.

My question today is about the treatment for the fluid around her lung; she couldn't breathe in August and instead of doing the pleuradisis they performed on her affected lung (she had a recurrence to the affected side last year), they installed a Pleurex Catheter. She's been draining every day, sometimes easily, sometimes it's a bit more complicated and difficult, but the quantity of the fluid is slowly decreasing as she's taking more of the chemo.

The last two days, while the quantity of fluid is still a bit lower than it normally as been, the color is changing. The nurse called her lung doctor and he said not to worry about it, but as it's now the second day, and the color is red, I have my concerns about what's going on in her body. Her mood is slightly shifted as well--she's been in a great place, and now she seems to be slipping a bit. There's a call into oncology to see what they think, but I was wondering who here has had experiences with the Pleurex--I'm struggling to find stories.

She had a few clots in her lungs that they were working on breaking up with a blood thinner--but she hasn't had a chest x-ray or scan for a few months now. I'm concerned that there could be some internal bleeding -- but I have a tendency to jump to the worst case scenario. She just had a complete blood workup and everything is looking pretty good; Her bun/creatine ratio is just a teeny bit elevated, but otherwise, her counts are really, really stable.

Thanks for any kind of info you might have! She's been stage IV for about 2 years now. She responds well once we get her on a treatment path, it's always the in-betweens that get a little funky. And we just finished an in-between, and I was hoping for a nice, long stable middle of treatment. Don't know if we're going to get that, but I've not given up hope! Just want to make sure I'm asking the right questions.