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When we look back at the last year, it feels like our family’s story has been written in a language of scans, reports, and numbers on screens. Each image has carried its own weight. Some images were heavy with fear, others shining with hope. Today, we want to share a glimpse into Ross’ journey, told through three black-and-white images that speak louder than words.

From left to right, the scans on the screen show the progression of Ross’s eye tumor:

• The first image (left) is the most recent. This was taken just a day ago, after months of medication, participation in the IDE196 clinical trial, and plaque brachytherapy. It shows a dramatic change…a tumor that once loomed large is now reduced, more contained, less threatening.
• The middle image is from just before the trial began. At that point, we were standing at a crossroads, weighing difficult choices, with the size of the tumor making everything feel urgent and overwhelming.
• The final image on the right reaches further back, before medication…when the tumor first took center stage in our lives. It was a season filled with questions and uncertainty, when the unknown was bigger than anything else in the room. This was the largest it ever was.

Seeing them side by side is humbling. What was once an 6.7 millimeter wall of fear is now shrinking. It’s not gone, but it’s fighting back against the odds—and so are we.

This isn’t just a story about medicine or science. It’s about faith. It’s about the incredible team at Mayo Clinic and the clinical trial that gave Ross another option when hope felt thin. It’s about the community of people—family, friends, and strangers—who have prayed, supported, and carried us when the load felt too heavy.

We are grateful to God, to our family, to our friends, to the medical team, to the hotel staff, to the airline crews, to the ocular melanoma groups online, to… everyone. We are deeply, endlessly grateful.

The truth is, we don’t know exactly what the next scan will show, or what tomorrow will bring. But today, these images are a reminder that progress is real, healing is happening, and gratitude is the thread holding us together.

To those of you walking your own journey—whether in medicine, in grief, in faith, or in waiting—may these images encourage you to hold on. Sometimes hope is hidden in the black and white, slowly revealing itself in ways we can’t always see in the moment.

Here’s to every step forward.

Love and Light,
The Traveling Withers