How long do you travel for treatment?

I travel 5 days a week about 3-4 hours round trip. It gets tedious. Many of the folks at Scripps (San Diego) stay at hotels/motels close buy. It is pricey but many are from outside California or from Northern California.

If you're getting the treatment you ned it is worth it. It is a time that will end with an excellent result! Keep your spirits up.

Talk to your Dr. to see if there are any other suggestions to make him more comfortable.

I only had a 10 min commute. I chose the Kramer Cancer Center that was near by for radation treatments. Very good facility. I was treated very well there. I would recommend them to any one. Located in West Bend Wisconsin. Dr Hall first class all the way. I work second shift so I scheduled my Apts at 2:00 so I could go right to work from there. Worked out great . Never missed a day of work.

I traveled about 2 hrs from home for my surgery, and only had to go back post-surgery once at 6 weeks. Since I am still working full time, if I'd gone one of the external radiation routes that required multiple treatments I would have had to take extended medical leave, and would likely have arranged a local apartment or something for the treatment period.

For some people, travel for treatment is a huge issue, for others, not so much. I've seen the toll it takes. A few years ago, a young girl whose family I know well was treated for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma 2 hrs from home, and her parents made daily trips back and forth, and still managed to hold on to local jobs and keep her siblings in school.

One hour one way.

This topic got me interested enough to do some reading on the web about factors involved in travel-distance-to-treatment.

In doing so I came across an article, in a responsible medical journal no less, which was making the extraordinary claim:

"… that patients who travel out of their neighborhood for elective care from specialized medical centers may have better outcomes than local patients with the same illnesses who are treated at the same centers."

Or, that:

"… travel distance is positively associated with survival (i.e., patients who live farther from the center survive longer than patients who live close to it)."

(Granted this is getting away from this thread's original question, but the claim that this article was making seemed so non-intuitive to me that I thought it might be interesting to mention it as a sidenote to the thread's original question).

The article:
jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/95/18/1370.full

However, toward the end of this article the statement is also made:

"We also cannot exclude the possibility that patients with poor prognoses might have moved closer to the University of Chicago for care before their first medical encounter, thus creating a spurious association between travel distance and outcome."

Well, really! Yes, I suppose factors like that really would make a difference, now wouldn't they?! And are there are likely other "factors" as well that can't "be excluded???"

Again, sorry if this is getting off the track a bit, but maybe there actually is some relevance here. That is, if you're planning to do a bit of traveling to your treatment center, you'll know that claims such as that article makes, if you do come across them, are likely of questionable value at the very least.

(A pet peeve of mine: journal articles that imply conclusions when the evidence really isn't there).

Steve got his G7 (3+4) DX a little over a month ago & this is an issue we are struggling with. We've got 2 world class hospitals in our backyard (Cleve Clinic & UH) but neither have any PCa "rock stars" - although they do have well-respected surgeons & ROs.

Mani Menon is 3 hours away in Detroit. But if we go that route, we open the aftercare can of worms.

So in addition to the already bewildering array of treatment options that go along with Steve's DX, we add this whole issue of traveling for treatment.

No easy answers.

Suz

As a G9 (4+5) who was enamored with SBRT radiation 5 fractions and I am done rather than daily for 7 weeks, there were only 3 choices none anywhere near rural west central Florida where I live.

I could have gone to any of the 3 who are all renowned, the other two being Dr. Allen Katz in Flushing NY and a group of doctors Houseboy went to in Toronto Sunnybrrok if I recall. . The latter may have complicated my Medicare reimbursement.

Since I was also interested in seeing the best medical oncologists, Dr. Mark Scholz, Dr Richard Lam and Dr Jeffrey Turner whose practice is in Marina del Rey CA and because my radiation oncologist was so highly recommended by Tall Allen, I chose Dr Chris King at UCLA, and also had my Provenge treatments administered in California.

With sufficient advanced planning I was able to use SW Air flights $75 each way and stay with my son and his family in San Jose CA rather than incur expensive hotel rooms in LA with nothing but lonely walls versus grand kids, as opposed to continually commuting from FL or staying in LA.

I have had no adverse side effects since my last SBRT fraction in October 2014 and since my last Provenge cycle the first weekend of November.

Last summer I also went to Phoenix AZ to have the C-11 Acetate scan performed by another top doctor Fabio Almeida.

Before deciding on SBRT and Dr King, also consulted with Dr. Mack Roach at UCSF (close to where my son lives in san Jose) and twice with Dr Brian Moran at Chicago Prostate center (close to where my daughter lives) . This was all in addition to relatively local medical oncology at Univ of Florida and Shands in Gainesville.

G9 is a formidable form of cancer so I met it head on with equally powerful medical professionals regardless of distance.

I went an hour each way but was ready to fly to Los Angeles for treatment (about 2000 miles one way).

Traveled 4 hours roundtrip for pre-surgery and post-surgery . Then had ART at regional center in home town. My wife and I both travel to Cleveland for any surgery or major issues.

I traveled 20 minutes for my treatment.

Guess that means I got substandard treatment and am going to die.

Andrew

We live in the sticks, PDA. Fortunately, I believe Gary receives as good or maybe even better care locally from our small oncology team 10 minutes from home. We have traveled an hour and half for radiation tx and flown to Portland for clinical trial, but most of his tx has been right here in the sticks for past five years.
If he had time to consider options at dx, we may have investigated further, but he was literally hanging on by a thread, due to the long delay in dx. Can't say our primary care doc's are as skilled as our specialists..but I digress.
There are benefits that Gary would not trade for traveling to UCSF or other "close" large centers, other than the time and wear on body, which is a significant consideration with nausea and fatigue.
First, we never wait on getting appts, tx changes, scans or blood tests.
Also, I think the experience while there plays a major role for Gary in keeping up the fight and not dreading Dr day. Blood draw is 5 min deal, they know him and joke around a lot during the draw. Staff have become close friends. I take the receptionists granddaughter swimming with my own. We stopped checking in at front desk a long time ago and slip in the back door, and the medonc makes sure we laugh at something every visit, even if the news is not good. They are sincerely involved. DR was paged and called me at 11:00 pm on Sat night when Gary had bloody stool.
I would bet that with Gary's situation, traveling would have made treating his PCa intolerable with same results. We have no regrets to staying local.
Beth

I could see the church my wife and I got married in from my hospital window after surgery (that helped me handle things), hospital is 5 minutes from our home. Radiation clinic is about 15 minutes from here, the urologist's office is about 10 minutes away. No 'rock stars', but we live in an affluent area so I believe the medical care to be top - notch.