I have a dmNavigation in the site tree, it was approved and I changed it back to draft and it still shows. Restart Coldfusion and it disappeared as expected, change it back to approved and it will not show, restart coldfusion and it will still not show.
I am not sure what is happening, I can do a show draft and it shows but it is not a draft object as it has been approved.
Have a look at ADMIN > CONFIG FILES > GENERAL.
Scan the list for CATEGORYCACHETIMESPAN. It should be zero by default. If its not, change it to zero.
It's an odd name for the value, but its a legacy caching option for the tree. It's only valid for trees that are slow. It should not be used. This feature will die in a fire.