Question:
Can signs of dementia or alzheimers be painful feelings of 'fireworks', 'sparks' and 'throbbing' in the brain????

My mum is 63 years old.For more than 2 1/2 years she has complained of 'fireworks' in the brain. Her head throbbs when she lays down and she has much trouble sleeping. She has not been a well woman for many years and the doctors have not been able to detect anything abnormal. She had a brain scan about 2 years ago and is to go for another one next week.

Mum is now starting to panic. She is getting forgetful and has insight into 'silly' things she is doing.

She describes that she can feel 'things' bursting in her head and this has been going on for the past 2 years, but worse lately.

Can anyone please provide me with any suggestions?I am an occupational therapist and have worked with may people with early stage dementia and alzheimers, but I have never heard of of physical pain complain of 'fireworks and sparks' in the brain. Mum calls is varicous brains.

Answer: Sounds more like migraine to me, but surely someone would have diagnosed that by now?

It is not unusual for post menopausal women to get confused and forgetful, all to do with reduced hormones, so maybe the two symptoms are not related. Is she suffering from any kind of stress? that can have all kinds of effects.

It doesn't sound like Alzheimers or Dementia, it sounds like some other neurological complaint. I am sorry your mum is ill, I know first hand how frightening it is when there is something neurologically wrong and the doctors cannot find it, but as one neurologist explained to me, there are 33,000 neurological illness that they know about, and at least as many again that they don't. It could be anything, so make sure that the doctors do not just dismiss her, even if they continue to find nothing abnormal, something clearly is, you may have to fight her corner for her, getting her second opinions and the like, but keep at it, someone somewhere will come up with something that either diagnoses her or helps her. Just because she is doing things like sticking money into the keyhole does not mean it is linked to dimentia. The brain is associating parking the car with the need to insert money into the parking meter, the keys must also be inserted, into the ignition, so the brain is making a logical link, but is getting it a little wrong. I have severe ME and have all sorts of weird things going on in my brain, pains, sparks (not fireworks though) and a weird sound like a wet flip flop being slapped onto a tiled floor (only way I can describe it) and I do things very similar to your mum.