The Bends

[TSandM]

Veronika, you may want to start your own thread on this, with a title requesting input from other divers with PFOs. This thread is somewhat old, and may not get many views from people who have the specific information for which you are asking. It's also not clear to me, from your post, whether you want information from people who are diving with open PFOs, or people who have gone through the closure procedure.

 

[Knackas]

I was diagnosed with a PFO in October last year after a trip to Vanuatu diving the President Coolidge. I have been diving since 1992 and had no problems until I started doing decompression dives. I was a bit aware on that trip as a previous trip to Truk Lagoon in 2010 I also showed symptoms which I never followed up. My symptoms were migraine auras or scintillating scotomas. I have suffered these off and on through my adult life so when in Truk I really didn't think much of it until I got pins and needles in my left hand after the last dive of our trip. I was treated with oxygen and everything cleared up with no chamber ride. When the symptoms showed up in Vanuatu I immediately stopped diving and contacted Dan. After talking to the Doctor I resumed diving the next day but no decompression and all went well. He advised when I got back to Australia that I get checked for a PFO and it turned out I had one.
I was contemplating whether to have it closed or not as I have been diving for quite awhile and have no problems on no decompression dives, what convinced me to have it closed was the increased risk of stroke. I had the procedure done in December and have had two shallow dives since. I was tested 3 months after the procedure and told it had healed over and I could resume diving. I thought it would take at least 6 months but hey what the heck. I would like to have dived more but work and family commitments have taken care of that.