Scare and sad as Mom just coughed up a bed of blood

My mom is in Acute Hospital (inpatient) past 12 days for her extended stage SCLC.  Finished Chemo in late Feb but since got so many setback (pneumonia, shingles, canker sore, swallowing difficulty, diabete strike high) and since she is a regular visitor at the Hospital ER!!!   After shingles she becomes disable, enroll her to this hospital we are hoping to get her back on her feet but...

This Saturday mid night (to sunday), mom told my brother that she could not breath. My brother tested her o2 as seeing her Oxygen level goes down to 50 within several minutes.  Call blue was announced.  Nurse suctioned mom with fresh blood coming out instead phlegm.  We were told she lost a lot of blood - in result she had plasma transfussion late sunday evening.  Initially at night time, they suspected the blood thinner caused my mom but on the sunday morning, the doctor came and stated X-ray show my mom lung is / was still good. He said only 2 suspected areas - lung and her stomach (sore) caused by bed-rest too long in hospital.  I have never heard of such and I just wonder if any of you have experienced anything like this?  

We are very very scared.  Mom is on Ventillator to help her breathing...   This is a deja vu for us.  Dad was in the same boat in 2007 and did not last long...  Is this a sign of the end?  Mom seems to be strong enuf to try to pull those uncomfortable tube out of her mouth and the nurse now has to strain her down!!!  

We tried to take mom to Clinical trial but no luck so far. UCI doctors constantly said mom has not performed well in the first line chemo round. The clinical trial doctor at Cedar Sinai has not able to see Mom as she is bed-hospitalized.   We are so frustrated with doctors now.  Why cant they visit patients in different (out of in-house) hospital?  Is it a patient life not worth the try???

Any advise pls,

Victoria

Turn out Mom has some bad reaction to Nasal Tube Feeding and along with the bed-rest too long in hospital on top of long list of drugs (Heartburn - high concentration of Citric Acid can build up Ulcer) caused her stomach to internal bleeding on this aspiration pneumonia episode.  Her Doctors said she was lucky that we were at her bedside and caught it at the right time. All of her other organs are still fuctioning well -  but her cancer, one of the tumors that wrap around her lungs that blocking the blood supplied to her heart atteries that constantly give her the Congestive Heart failure show down.  No damage, no deterioriation was seen. Thanks God. She is very alert and conscicous now.

A lot of time, you hear the news regarding cancer patients die of pneumonia complication mostly due to being caught too late. The patients can easily sink into Coma and cant help much anymore (happened on my Dad 2 yrs ago).  All of this is a known problem but a lot of hospital they still dont have an effective preventive methodology / actions indeed they continue to blame on staff shortage.

I hope my post can help others in the future to stay close observation to their beloved ones to avoid the drama and heartache.

V

(Prevention of Aspiration Pneumonia: A Research-Based Protocol excerpt:  Studies describing the incidence of aspiration pneumonia fall into two categories: (1) those that aspirate oropharyngeal contents and (2) those that aspirate gastric contents, the former group having the higher incidence. Table 1 shows the incidence of aspiration pneumonia in several studies)