"A DUI if a cop stopped you."
I was not groggy or in any way affected as far as I could tell when I left. I've been out on the sidewalk in my city at 2:00AM when the bars close watching drivers weave down the streets. I would rate the probability of getting a DUI as only slightly higher than winning the lottery.
The only DUIs I've ever heard about come after the crash.
If your nurse documented you left against medical advice and refused to sign a release, its on you. You could get arrested if you got into an accident and they found out you left AMA from the facility. Of course, you would then probably blame the facility for not holding you, (as you were under the influence of anesthetic agents) and therefore you were unable to make correct decisions. Its stuff like this, and public hostility, that has now evolved into a staffing crisis in medical facilities.
The responsible thing to do was call a taxi or Uber home instead of endangering the public.
Do you think medical personnel want to deal with all of this ? If there was no baby involved, and Candace wanted to leave the hospital, I would be Johnny on the spot having her sign a AMA release and waving goodbye to her.
My husband had a colonoscopy under general anesthesia in the early 2,000’s. I drove him to the surgical center early that morning, I waited in the waiting room and then I drove him home by 11AM.
Once we got home, he insisted he was OK to go to work for the rest of the day. I however had to go back to my job and explained to him, and as we had discussed earlier, that I couldn’t drive him to work and pick him up, being that our workplaces were about an hour away from our home but in opposite directions.
He insisted however that he was OK to drive himself to work. I reminded him of his discharge papers that said he should not drive (or operate heavy machinery) for the next 24 hours.
He also complained about being hungry and wanting breakfast.
I said, “Sure, make breakfast for yourself, I’ll wait…”
Thinking he was not at all groggy or at all impaired, he attempted to make scrambled eggs and bacon and toast for himself.
He ended up with some eggshells in the scrambled eggs, missed putting the rest of the eggshells in the trash can with several ending up on the floor, forgot to turn the burner on for the bacon and couldn’t understand why the bacon wasn’t cooking, put the bread in the toaster and forgot to push down the lever. He did manage to make some scrambled eggs, but then put the empty frying pan back on the burner without turning the burner off.
I saw him put the frying pan back on the still lit burner and waited until the smoke alarm went off before turning off the burner and removing the frying pan, opening windows and waving a magazine at the smoke alarm until it stopped.
Yet he still insisted he wasn’t at all impaired and asked me to hand him his car keys. I handed him my car keys, not his, then he went to the closet to get his coat and then asked me again where his car keys were.
I then pointed out he was holding them in his left hand and pointed out they were not his keys.
I finally convinced him that he was in no condition to drive, then called my boss to tell him I wouldn’t be coming into the office for the rest of the day because my husband was a giant man baby and needed adult supervision. He laughed.
I finished making his breakfast, got him to put on his jammies and got him to go to bed after eating.
He slept until the next morning.