Hi Tennis and greetings from another Gleason 9. Sure is tough trying to make the decision, isn't it? The fact that you are a G9, puts you in the high-risk category and makes the decision even more difficult!
In my case, I was also leaning toward surgery, but even though I also had negative bone scan as my disease was staged my oncologist felt there was about
a 50% chance the cancer would have moved beyond the prostate and that I would need follow-up radiation. Since I didn't want the SEs of both surgery AND radiation, I opted to move directly to radiation. While your cancer appears to be confined to the prostate, keep in mind that as a G9, the cancer cells are considered aggressive and more likely to migrate.
In my case, I opted for what some call the "triple play": external beam radiation, brachytherapy and hormone therapy. That combo has very good success with high-risk patients and, in fact, a study on that was just posted within the past week by one of the most knowledgable guys here. You can read more at:
/prostatecancerinfolink.net/2016/07/31/for-very-high-risk-patients-ebrt-bt-is-superior-to-surgery-or-ebrt-only/One thing to keep in mind is that if you have radiation, whether it be brachytherapy or any kind of external radiation, as a G9 you are likely to be put on hormone therapy, which makes the radiation more effective. HT isn't particularly fun, but it is for a specific period of time--in my case, it was 18 months, but it depends on the radiation oncologist.
When you meet with your RO on Monday I would ask about
how long he would use HT in conjunction with the brachytherapy and about
using it in combination with external beam radiation. Good luck to you and let us know how we can help!