Question: My mother has a plurex catheter in her right lung. When we initially started draining we were getting 400 and 300, then in went down to 200 and 100. We started draining every other day per the doctors instructions. When we re ordered the bottles we got the smaller size (500ml) as opposed to the 1 liter size. We started getting 50's and 25's, then my mother felt short of breath again, so we did the draining laying down as opposed to sitting up. (the video we watched said you could do it sitting up or laying down). We used our last 1 liter bottle because my mother thought maybe the vacuum was greater on the bigger bottle as opposed to the smaller. We pulled 475ml off of her right lung in this position. The weird part came later when I went to empty the bottle. No matter how large I made the hole I couldn't get the fluid to drain. Then I noticed something poking out of the hole. I was wearing latex gloves so I pulled it out. There was a slightly flesh colored gelatinous mass that had been pulled into the bottle. There was no pain during the draining and my mother was breathing much better afterward. What we were wondering is this part of the bottle or catheter we haven't encountered before? Or is this something from the lung, perhaps cancer cells?

She does have ovarian cancer that spread to the plueral cavity. Are there any symptoms of infection that we should be looking for? She doesn't have fever so far. And when she got the left side drained by the doctor they tested for infection and didn't find any. Can a person have infection in one side and not the other?

thank you very much for your help