As I understand it, if you're close enough to the hospital to make the drive every other day for a few weeks you don't have to stay in hospital. I live two hours from the hospital so when it came time to arrange for the ECT I opted to stay in hospital for the duration of the intensive treatment phase. You get three treatments a week for three weeks then it tapers off.

It helped me a lot and is continuing to help as I go every four weeks now. The memory issue hit me most right around the three week intensive phase. Now that I'm more than two years down the road from that things are pretty good though I still can't navigate very well, something I used to excel at. I consider that a small price to pay, however.

If you want more information than this, feel free to ask.