After surgery - no one to watch me for 24 hours

[ElTortilla]

I'm due to have surgery but now I have no one to watch me for 24 hours afterwards as it's day surgery. The hospital won't release me without anyone to pick me up and take me home. What do people do who have no one?

Either just leave. They're not sat there watching you. It's that or stay in for 24 hours.

Stay in hospital, sadly.

I’ve had someone collect me before and then had to leave, but it’s not advisable. I only did it as I know I tolerate anaesthesia very well.

Ahh I'll let them know then that I'll have to be in overnight. Thank you.

I'm a risky one for anaesthesia so will probably need to be kept an eye on.

I'd let the hospital know ASAP. Options might be to find a ward bed to stay overnight, or depending on the op, do it via an epidural rather than general anaesthetic. PIL recently had a hip replacement via epidural!

Try some local charities? They might have volunteers

Options are:
a) Find someone who’ll agree to stay over.
b) Tell the hospital you have someone, they’ll never know and can’t check.
c) Tell the hospital, but be prepared for the fact that this may mean your surgery is delayed

I stayed a couple of nights after day surgery for various readings. It wasn’t an issue once the hospital knew.

@JC03745 depending a bit on the operation, you're probably more likely to need to stay in overnight after a spinal (we wouldn't often use epidural alone for elective surgery). Having a spinal rather than a GA wouldn't necessarily change much about whether someone would be discharged home alone.

There is an emerging fashion for low risk patients having low risk surgery, who live close to the hospital and have reliable phone signal, being able to go home alone, but am not sure it'll really catch on. The risk is not just related to the anaesthetic (even though that's all anyone ever mentions!) - surgical mischief can happen after discharge too so the operation needs factoring into discharge decision making. We still advise people not to sign important paperwork/drive/operate heavy machinery for 24-48 hrs after sedation/GA even with someone to care for them and that reflects that decision making may be impaired in that time... it's no less likely to be impaired home alone with no supervision!

OP, it's not an uncommon scenario at all and so long as they know before the day they should be able to organise an overnight bed.