Has anyone been hospitalized and sedated?

It's been a rough couple of weeks.  My mom had to stay in the hospital after they put in her left plurex catheter for a pneumerthorax, she was there for 4 days before it was resolved.  While there she requested a ua done because she thought she had a uti, turns out she did and they gave her antibiotics to take home.  I drained the catheter for 5 days before she went back to the doctor on Friday to have a infusion of clot buster to break up the blockage that was trapping fluid in the upper part of her right pluera.  It did do something but the pulminologist was very discouraged.  She was ok that night but had a rough night sunday with pain in her back and incision site.  She was also having a hard time getting her sp02 numbers up.  I stayed up with her til about 3am til she got settled and her sp02 numbers steadied out at 98% the next morning according to my father she was very depressed that the clot buster didn't work.  I later went out to do my errands with the intention of draining her at 3pm which was our usual time. I was heading back at around 2:30 when my dad called says mom wanted me home as soon as possible to drain her.  When I arrived she was in bad shape having disconnected her oxygen line so she could breath from the tube directly into her mouth.  I attempted to drain her and nothing came out.  We called 911.  When the paramedics arrived they hooked her up to a cpac mask after they took her spo2 numbers and they were in the 70's.  The ambulance took us to the ER at her regular hospital. Where she appeared to be doing better.  She was talking though it was hard to hear her through the mask and the doctors were very helpful.  They wanted to back flush her catheters to relieve the pressure.  Unfortunatley the adaptor to connect her catheters could not be found and there was a communication mix up with the department that installed the catheters about what was needed and how fast.  This was also on a saturday so there weren't as many staff as there would have been on a week day.  After she came back from her ct scan she started having trouble breathing and became very distressed, even with the mask on her sp02 levels dropped to the 70's again and her heart rate went way up, she was cold and sweaty at the same time.  I flagged down a nurse who got the ER team back in there and they cobbled together a contraption to access her catheter until someone from pulmenary came down with one of the kits we use at home for the draining.  They managed to pull more fluid and clot from her clogged right pluera that had the clot buster on Friday, but even that didn't help.  She was panicing and trying to tear the mask off because she felt like she was sufficating. It was decided to sedate and insert a breathing tube.  After that was done she was taken from the ER to the ICU where they worked for over an hour to stablize her.  She has been there since last night.  More than 500 ml of fluid was drawn from her right side.  Less than 50 ml was taken from her left and no clot busting agent or flush was ever introduced becauses it was previously shown on scan that her left lung was trapped by fiberous growth which will take a laproscopic thoracic surgery to remove, which they don't think she is up for right now.  We met with the oncall doctor this morning and we were lucky in that her regular pulmenolgist whom we like saw us and came to check on her.  It was determined that there was still fluid on her right side and there was little to be done about removing it.  What caused this is believed to be an infection, judging by the scans likely to be pneumonia, which was not previously diagnosed.  She is still sedated and on iv antibiotics to kill the infectioin but at last check was still running a fever of 101 to 102.  Her oncologist is coming by tomorrow to **** her situation.  I am very worried for her.  My dad wonders if her doctors are pulling away because they believe they can't do anything more.  He wonders if she will ever be able to come home from t he hospital, because she didn't want to die in a hospital.  What I want to know is has anyone here been in or know someone who has come back from a similar situation.  I would be really greatful if I could hear some stories of this.   Thank you for reading.