Fergus Finlay: We need to talk about the terrible and traumatic effects of dementia

Sometimes the memories are all you take with you into older age. And then dementia comes after them, stripping them away one by one

The best estimates available suggest that 100,000 of us will have dementia in 10 years’ time, 150,000 of us in 20 years.

I was in a hospital, visiting, on Saturday night. It’s a biggish hospital, old but with a highly committed and welcoming team of staff. It does a lot of different things, and it also has long-term “residents”. We were visiting someone who is on the mend from surgery but was very keen to have a bit of company to watch Ireland playing Tonga in the Rugby World Cup.

The hospital had kindly set up a large screen in the dining room, and everyone who wanted to watch the match, patients and visitors alike, was welcome to go down from their bed in the ward. Not too many availed of the offer, and it was a small enough group who cheered Ireland on. But it was worth doing, and the outcome certainly cheered our patient up.