Table 2.

Care Partners’ Emotional Reactions Stratified by Level of Impairment and Scan Results

Level of impairment	Elevated amyloid	Not-elevated amyloid
Mild cognitive impairment	“Getting the results, I mean it shocked us … In a way, I think it shocked me more, maybe, than him. I don’t know if he thought about maybe he was going down that road or not. I think he’d mentioned it a couple times, ‘Well, maybe that’s what I have.’ But it seems like it hit me more than him.” “The tests were positive for Alzheimer’s, and the news was devastating.” “I can honestly say that when we received them, we weren’t shocked, because we were expecting it. So it wasn’t a shock. Did it upset us? I think maybe yeah, it does upset you a little bit, because you know what’s coming down the road.”	“It relieved us, because we were really … Because of the memory loss, we were really afraid that he did have Alzheimer’s, so we were very relieved.” “Well it was negative. I’m not sure. Just knowing that that’s a relief, but looking at other things that might be causing similar issues.” “Well it gives a little more hope that it’s just more of age related, maybe dementia type things that means she won’t go down as fast, compared to maybe Alzheimer’s patients.”
Dementia	“Actually, he suspected it and told me that’s what he thought that it was. So when we got the confirmation, it wasn’t a big shock or anything.” “I’m certainly grateful that we’re on that … I’m not grateful we have the diagnosis but that the diagnosis was found sooner than later and that they can continue to treat him and do what we can with some ongoing … at this.”	“I think the fact that he did not have Alzheimer’s was a big relief because he’s more frightened of Alzheimer’s than he is of arteriosclerosis of the vessels in his brain. So I don’t think the PET (positron emission tomography) scan has really changed his care.” “I don’t know that it’s actually influenced our plans. We still are gonna have to deal with dementia. It’s just that it’s most likely a blood flow situation or something.”

Note: Bolding and italics added for emphasis.