I currently have a couple of friends who are hospitalized and that's led to a lot of calls and texts from mutual acquaintances asking, "How is he? What have you heard?" It's understandable and in most cases commendable for one person to care about about the health of another but there's also a certain…I'm not sure what to call it. Etiquette? Protocol? It's something in those categories.
The H.P. (Hospitalized Person) and/or their family may want to control the flow of information. You don't have a right to know what they don't want you to know…or don't want you to know now, nor do they owe you an explanation for not telling you everything. And one good reason why they might not is that the current diagnosis may be tentative and subject to change.
Or the patient may just want his privacy and/or not want to deal with keeping others informed or answering their questions. He might want visitors, he might not. The few times I've been hospitalized, I didn't want them right away…and then when I did, I didn't want certain people coming around.
As readers of this site know, I busted my ankle on January 21 and spent more than a month in a hospital and then in a rehab center. If I didn't tell you at the time, it's not that I didn't or don't like you. It's just that once I was injured, my own needs became such a major issue in my life that I didn't have room for a lot of other people. That's why I didn't post anything about it here until I returned home on February 28th.
When you hear someone is in the hospital, I think the proper response is to let them know, by whatever routes they have allowed to be open, that you care about them and that you're willing to help out in any way if you can…but it's up to them. Let them be and don't try to take whatever limited ninth-hand info you may have heard about and try to formulate a diagnosis or assumption about what's going on with them. You may not know as much as you think you do.