Prius MFD (touch screen) unexpectedly goes blank

I purchased a Prius several years ago and it has been a fabulous vehicle. I have become a big fan. This year my 2008 Prius crossed the 10-year mark. It has 152k miles. I have always had regular oil changes and maintenance at the local Toyota dealer. Unfortunately, while driving home after my oil change this past Saturday, the center touch screen suddenly started blinking on and off. I had never had this happen before and thought it was a fluke that would not recur after I restarted the car. Everything seemed fine after I turned off and restarted the vehicle.

Unfortunately, 2-days later the screen went completely black. I now have no control over my A/C, navigation, or anything else associated with the touch screen. If my windshield get foggy, I can no longer turn on the defroster. This sudden failure of a core component has rendered my Prius just about unusable and seemingly unsafe. My radio operation keeps blinking in and out as well, which never happened before so seems to be definitely tied with whatever happened to the MFD.

When I brought the Prius to the Toyota service center on Wednesday they told me that I could either purchase a new center MFD unit at a cost $9000 rr, they said they could attempt to get the unit repaired which would involve shipping it off and putting my Prius out of service for an entire month. The estimated cost for option 2 would be $1400, but had no guarantee of fixing the problem.

Naturally I am frustrated and wondering if anyone has ever encountered this issue and if simply changing out the MFD my be a solution? I live in south Alabama and get teased a lot about driving a Prius but always come back by lauding the vehicles reliability and how much money have am saving over driving a truck. Now I am the laughing stock of those naysayers. Please help me figure out how to fix this without it costing an arm and a leg. Any thoughts or recommendations are appreciated.