As you know, a couple of weeks ago my Grandma had a nasty fall and had to have brain surgery.

In the subsequent 16 days since she had her accident, we, her family, are as much in the dark with regards to her overall prognosis as we were at the very beginning. Now clearly where brain injuries are concerned you have to allow for a greater degree of overall uncertainty than you do with other injuries or illnesses.

Admittedly, the fact that Grandma now has MRSA complicates things. Infections are not conducive to great lucidity at the best of times, especially in an 85 year old woman who has recently encountered major head injuries.

That said, I simply do not buy the "we don't know what is going on" spiel that the doctors are feeding us. But the most annoying thing is that we only receive that spiel after we have asked several times to speak to someone. In the past two and a half weeks we have only been able to speak to the doctors on only three individual occasions.

I feel really guilty for dissing them because I do genuinely think that they do a good job, but the doctors really need to be more forthcoming with information, especially when the patient concerned is not able to ask the pertinent questions. In their professional opinions there must be a number of avenues they can expect Grandma to go down, each with their own varying degrees of recovery / deterioration. All we want to know is what those avenues are, so that we are just a little bit prepared. My Grandpa especially needs to be prepared. He is currently deluding himself that she is going to make a full recovery and it is clear to the rest of the family, even with our lack of medical knowledge, that this is not going to happen.