Closing in

Several hours on I'm still trying to make sense of a fascinating experience this afternoon. After work I went to visit my uncle who has short-term memory loss. (Kind of apposite after my experience yesterday.) His long term memory is fine - he remembers his nine-digit National Insurance number, he remembers the name of the steam train he travelled on in Australia decades ago, he remembers the name of the Argentinean warship that the British torpedoed in the Malvinas war (he says 'Falklands') 41 years ago. He can't remember who was in the room five minutes ago, nor that he's already asked me four times where I live. But we can talk about set theory notation.

At a certain point a carer needed to come into his room and I had to leave. I sat on a window seat in the corridor next to a woman reading a book. She looked at me, I introduced myself and she told me her daughter has the same name. We chatted about where her daughter lives, what my work is, her work with nursery children long ago, the youngsters who visited the care home yesterday and the toddler who took a shine to her because his T-shirt had the same colour stripes as hers. We discussed the fascination of observing child development. She told me about her journey up the Nile, on foot and by bus, because she wanted to see its source. She asked how I'd learnt to teach the excluded. She told me that she was over-educated and she'd ended up teaching at university. Then my uncle poked his head out of his room looking for me (I was impressed that he'd remembered I was there). He's a bit of a loner so I introduced them. He told her who I was. She asked his name and immediately got it wrong. He told her who I was again. She asked his name again. He misunderstood. She became deaf. He was tongue-tied. She garbled. Their exchange was 100% incoherent.

I could have a discussion with either of them. They cannot have a discussion together. Is this common? If so, what do care homes do to the capacities of their residents?