G9 question-help

It was 7-8 weeks for me. Five weeks for the bone scan seems like a long time--I know I had my scan within a week. I think you want to get started sooner than that. Are you locked into Mayo? We can probably recommend other uros or ROs to talk with, although if you're a G9 I'm sure they'd want to know about your bone scan results.

Can you post your stats as part of your signature? We can probably be a bit more helpful with that info.

You have some great docs at U of C, Northwestern, and elsewhere - why are you traveling all the way to Mayo? In fact, you should be able to get a bone scan and CT at any imaging facility locally within a week. After you do that, you can get a Lupron injection, which will halt any further growth of the cancer for a long while. That will give you time to investigate your alternatives.

A few weeks won't matter more or less. Even high risk patients who waited more than 3 months had no different outcomes than patients who had therapy in less than 3 months - and that was true whether the treatment was radiation or surgery.

As for doctors in the Chicago area...

Brian Moran at the Chicago Prostate Cancer Center can treat with a combination of low dose rate brachytherapy (seeds) and external beam radiation. This kind of combination therapy has the highest record of success in high risk patients.

In Detroit, Alvaro Martinez does a similar procedure using high dose rate brachytherapy instead of seeds.
William Catalona is perhaps the most famous one. He practices open surgery at Northwestern.

Arica Hirsch at Advocate Lutheran has a new way of accomplishing it using an SBRT boost to the prostate.

While radiation generally has better outcomes than surgery for high risk PC, the most famous surgeon in the Chicago area would be William Catalona at Northwestern.

Sorry to hear you have a Gleason 9 diagnosis, but in the Chicago area there should be no shortage of knowledgeable physicians.

I'm also in the area, and chose surgery from Dr. Arieh Shalhav at the U of Chicago. He has a partner there named Greg Zagaja, and between them they've done over 4,000 robotic surgeries.

As someone said, William Catalona is the dean of prostate surgeons in this area. He does open surgery. During my research, I also met Dr. Robert Flanigan, at Loyola University. He is another open surgeon, and I was very impressed by him. He has a great manner.

Surgery may not be your best treatment option. However, I can't help you with radiation oncologists.

There are a number of G9 patients on this forum who have a lot of experience and advice. Good luck.