11-year-old Ohio boy with Down syndrome beats cancer after yearslong battle

OHIO, USA — Levi Buxman is 11 years old. He has Down syndrome. And he just beat cancer.

The fifth grader at Green Elementary in Smithville, a small Wayne County town in Ohio, was diagnosed with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia in November of 2023. His mom, Lauren Buxman, thought he had the flu when she took him to urgent care that weekend.

Within hours, everything changed.

“So I took him to the ER and with leukemia, they can detect it with a blood test. So within a couple hours, we had a diagnosis and then he didn’t come home again for 70 days,” Lauren told WKYC.

She was alone when she got the news. Her husband, Branden, was driving home from a hunting trip in Colorado.

“I just felt like time stood still, just being there all alone,” she said. “He was asking questions because he could tell that I was clearly upset and I didn’t want to scare him.”

What followed was more than two years of fighting — sometimes just to survive. Levi spent nearly 267 nights in the hospital; he suffered a stroke that left his medical team speechless.

“When we saw the scans, I kind of wanted to vomit,” Lauren recalled. “The lesion is massive, and the neurologist said he had no explanation to why. There was no cognitive loss, there was no loss in speech, there was no facial drooping, no seizures, nothing. He’s like, ‘I don’t have an explanation other than God.'”

Levi was intubated on Christmas Eve 2024 at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, where he spent more than a month before transferring back to Akron Children’s for rehabilitation to learn to walk again.

Through his darkest days, Levi found a friend in the oncology unit at Akron Children’s: a boy named Liam.

“Liam was his friend that he met in the oncology unit, and they had some kind of weird relationship where one of them would show up at the hospital and just for an acute illness and they’d end up staying for weeks and the other one would be right behind them,” Lauren said.

Liam passed away last May, and when Levi rang the bell at Akron Children’s — the moment every cancer patient fights toward — he carried his friend with him.

“Levi really kind of struggled around his bell ringing, wishing Liam could be there too,” Lauren said.

But Levi’s community made sure he didn’t walk through it alone.

On March 20, students and staff at Green Elementary dressed in blue — Levi’s favorite color — lined the halls and gave him a clap-out he will never forget. The school had already played the live stream of his actual bell ringing at their monthly town hall, then had him ring a bell in front of the entire student body.

For Lauren, the moment was years in the making. 

“One of my biggest fears when we had Levi and got his Down syndrome diagnosis was that he wouldn’t have friends, that kids would be cruel and he just wouldn’t be seen,” she said. “When we did the clap out, just seeing how much the kids love him and the kids were seeking him out for high fives and hugs and calling his name, it warms my heart to see that the kids see him for who he is.”

Turning to her son, she added, “He loves people in a way that I will never understand. You love everybody, huh? And you’re just happy to be a part of the party, huh?”

Levi is now cancer free, and according to his mom, the old Levi is coming back.