Health

PFO
During the summer of 2008 it was discovered I had a congenital heart defect called Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO). It's a hole between the right and left sides of the heart, which lets the dirty blood on the way to the lungs to sometimes mix with the clean blood that's just come back from the lungs and is going out to the rest of the body. Depending on the size, sometimes blood clots can pass through from the dirty blood to the clean blood, which puts a person at a higher risk for a stroke.

Everyone has this hole when they are born, but in most people it closes on its own by the time a person turns 2 yrs old. In some people it doesn't close, for currently unknown reasons.

A lot of people don't find out they have a PFO until after they've had a stroke. Migraines are also a possible symptom of PFO. Supposedly about 50% of migraine sufferers also have PFO. So if you suffer from migraines, you may want to consider being checked for PFO. Better to be safe than sorry, strokes and their after affects can be nasty things to have to endure. It was decided that I actually had a mini stroke back in 2003 when I was pregnant with my son. I went blind for about an hour, then my vision returned and all luckily all seemed fine. I actually hadn't thought much of it at the time because I'd had orthostatic hypotension for a long time and I was used to having periodic vision problems because of it. I was very fortunate that neither I nor my son experienced any lasting permanent effects from the mini stroke.

Not all PFOs are considered worth fixing, they must be at least 3mm to be considered important to fix. Mine was 11mm, which is almost 1/2 inch and was considered quite large.

The hole was plugged through a catheter procedure, which I stayed awake and watched. It was very interesting and I later got jokingly chided for being a "back seat driver" during the procedure. I now have an $8800 device in my heart. I was a bit nervous before the procedure, mainly because before that the only other procedure I'd been hospitalized for was child birth. It was really nothing to be worried about. There wasn't a lot of pain anywhere and my recovery has gone quite well. The worst part of the whole experience was having to take Plavix and Aspirin together -which made me bruise extremely easily. I felt like one giant walking bruise for a while.

I mention this on here for the benefit of anyone with migraines, so they can consider being checked for PFO if their Dr's haven't suggested it yet. And to hopefully help other people who are getting ready to have the procedure done. If you have any specific questions of what my experience with the procedure was like, feel free to email me and I would be happy to answer them and hopefully help to put your mind at ease.

My cardiologist has an excellent web site that explains all about PFO and the treatment in detail:
http://sorensenmd.com/pfo.php

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