Not at all. Honestly the procedure was fairly trivial, as surgeries go. The procedure itself took about 15 minutes; I was awake and even watched the progress.

Not at all. Honestly the procedure was fairly trivial, as surgeries go. The procedure itself took about 15 minutes; I was awake and even watched the progress. They go in through a catheter in the thigh/groin area, snake up and deploy the device, which is roughly a double-sided umbrella/clamshell, one half on each side of the hole. Mine was a GORE Cardioform. It's safe for MRI within some parameters: I have a card I have to show the technologist. In total, of course, it was an all-day affair. For me the worst part was having to lie perfectly still for about 4 hours in recovery, to not pop a stitch. Even so, that night at home I did have some bleeding and ended up going to the hospital. They simply applied pressure and a stronger bandage. If I remember correctly, I basically had to avoid strenuous activity for a couple weeks, but aside from that initial bleeding recovery was not a big deal. For me it seemed like a relatively low risk / low impact procedure (modulo the US healthcare cost lottery). I enjoy scuba diving as well, and I know that PFO also correlates with increased risk of decompression sickness. In addition to the migraine aura, I'd had, let's say a small handful of other minor visual glitches over the years (even predating the concussion), so from my perspective, my most valuable resource, my mind, was getting attacked by microemboli, and for me, correcting the issue mechanically was preferable to living on pharmaceuticals (especially since that only solves part of the equation anyway).