A childhood cancer diagnosis is something that no family wants to hear. However, this was an unfortunate reality for two Northeast Ohio families. In order to raise awareness about childhood cancer and advocate for families and children dealing with a difficult diagnosis, these families bravely agreed to share their stories.
Milo Hambleton, Age 4
“Looking back, there were little things that just didn’t seem right,” says Milo’s mother, Amariliz Hambleton. “The whole month of December, he kept getting sick. I was in and out of the doctor’s office, in and out of the ER, and they would say, ‘Oh, he has RSV; he has a viral infection; he has hand, foot and mouth,’ and they would just send us home.”
However, everything changed on Jan. 4, 2026.
“Milo woke up covered in what looked like bruises. We rushed him to the ER, and that’s when they finally did some blood work,” Hambleton recalls. “They said, ‘We’re going to transfer you to Main Campus Cleveland Clinic, and oncology is going to speak to you.’ Everything happened so fast. Honestly, we were in shock.One moment, we’re living normal lives, and the next, we’re learning about leukemia, chemotherapy, blood counts and treatment plans. We were terrified, broken and overwhelmed. From that moment on, our focus became helping Milo survive.”
Milo was 3 years old when he received his diagnosis, and turned 4 while still in the hospital.
When Milo’s family took him to the hospital, he was diagnosed with a very aggressive type of leukemia called acute myeloid leukemia (AML) by Dr. Rabi Hanna, chairman of the Division of Pediatric Hematology & Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplant at Cleveland Clinic Children’s, who is the expert in their group about this.
When Hanna reviewed Milo’s pathology, he discovered that due to a number of factors, there was likely a high risk of relapse with just chemotherapy. After reviewing the data, he had a discussion with the family to tell them standard chemotherapy alone wouldn’t be enough, and that to have the best chance at saving Milo’s life, he would need a bone marrow transplant to replace his immune system.
“This is really difficult for any family to hear — not only the word cancer, but also to hear that it has a poor prognosis,” Hanna says. “But what was amazing about this family, and this is what I tell any family who is facing this difficult and daunting situation, have trust in the team and work together with them, so you can remain the parents. Always trust your gut feeling. Advances in medicine make our ability to fight childhood cancer much better.”
Hanna added, “We don’t want children to just survive. We want them to thrive. We really need to pay attention to the disease, but also the emotional ramifications.”
The balance he tries to strike is how both the medical staff and parents can be on the same team to best help the child cope during this difficult time.
Finding Joy in the Difficulty
In the beginning, life for the Hambleton family became both chaotic and strictly regimented.
“The nursing staff had to take vitals on a regular basis, and he had to take medicine at certain times of the day,” explains Milo’s father, Matthew Hambleton. “We’d get all sorts of visitors between the social worker, the psychologist, and people wanting to talk to you about participating in various studies. Living in a hospital room, it was difficult to find any kind of normal. But as time went on, we found joy in the small milestones.”
For example, Matthew Hambleton says, “When they go over the list of side effects of chemotherapy, there’s a lot of scary stuff on that list. However, for Milo, through pretty much the entire time we were inpatient, all three cycles had very minor side effects, all things considered.”
Minimal side effects were only one of many things that brought the family joy.
“We found some joy in Milo still being able to smile through all this somehow,” Matthew Hambleton says. “He was very resilient, but he was also able to maintain a lot of his personality. Despite what he was going through and the things happening to his body that were out of his control, he was still able to smile, laugh and play as much as a 4-year-old possibly can.”
“Milo handled the sheer physical toll of his treatment with fantastic resilience,” Hanna says. “That still amazes me. I call him Super Milo. Even when he was enduring intense therapies that would exhaust any adult, he maintained his incredible spark. He would always want to play, even on the treatment floor. The joy and the energy never left him. Milo did not let the hospital or the leukemia define who he is. He just remained a kid.”
Building A Network of Support
For the Hambletons, community support was important during extended stays at the hospital.
“Our family and friends all came together and were there for us,” Amariliz Hambleton says. “The amount of support we received was overwhelming — in a good way. The doctors, nurses and staff were incredible.”
This is important because families with a childhood cancer diagnosis are in the hospital for long periods of time. She says, “After the first treatment, we didn’t leave for a month and a half.”
Extended hospital stays can become a financial burden for families, because parents may need to cut back on work hours or buy more takeout food. The Hambleton family credits programs that help families pay bills and drop off food to families at the hospital. She stressed the importance of that because “while you’re in the hospital the facility feeds your child, but not you.”
Matthew Hambleton echoes that gratitude, saying, “There’s support for everything and anything under the sun that you could need.”
Looking to the Future
Today, Milo is making wonderful progress after receiving a bone marrow transplant.
“He’s responded well to the transplant, along with the subsequent medication,” Matthew Hambleton shares. “He’s currently taking a light liquid dose of chemotherapy that we’re working on weaning off as his recovery progresses. Once we get to the other side of that, there’s a 90% chance he’s past relapse. In the next year and a half, there’s still about an 8% chance. Along the way, he’ll remain on supportive medications to help prevent recurrence.
“It’s always in the back of our minds that cancer can come back, but he’s doing very well, all things considered,” he says.
The family is looking forward to returning to simple, everyday joys.
“Our biggest hope is that he continues to have good results, beats this cancer, and that we’re able to get back to a normal life,” Amariliz Hambleton says. “We look forward to going on vacations together, being with family, and trying new restaurants.”
She adds, “I think we’ve seen more of the Cleveland Clinic in the first six months of this year than I want to see in the rest of our lives. But we also hope to take this experience and give back by volunteering and helping other families through what we went through.”
Advice for Families Facing a Childhood Cancer Diagnosis
The Hambleton family recognizes they aren’t the only family going through this diagnosis. Amariliz Hambleton wants other parents facing a new childhood cancer diagnosis to “know that you’re not alone, and there are a lot of resources out there. Take the help. Lean on the nurses and doctors. They are there for you.”
Matthew Hambleton adds, “Advocate for your child. You know your kid better than anybody else. Sometimes treatment plans can get pretty rigid, but if something doesn’t fit your child’s needs, speak up and don’t be afraid to.”
Although things are looking bright for Milo, Amariliz Hambleton says, “I wish people understood that childhood cancer doesn’t end when the treatments end. Families continue living with the fear, the appointments, the medications, and the uncertainty long after leaving the hospital.” Therefore, it is so important to hold onto gratitude and find joy during the process.
A childhood cancer diagnosis can be a matter of life or death, and communication between the medical team and the family is essential.
“It absolutely requires full and absolute transparency, and a profound level of trust.” Hanna says. “When you tell parents that their child’s life depends on highly toxic treatment, and a donor they never met, and that you will bring the child to the edge of death, and then give the child a chance to survive, that’s difficult. So we really navigate these things by never letting them feel that they were walking in the dark.”
Pediatric oncology, according to Hanna, is a very difficult specialty, but at the same time very rewarding. He shares that stories like Milo’s “always ignite the fire inside us. That is our reward.” Pediatric oncologists carry a lot of responsibility, and Hanna acknowledges that the emotional weight is undeniable.
“When the stakes are children’s lives, I wouldn’t deny that sometimes things really stick with you even after you leave the hospital,” Hanna says. “What is so important for me is witnessing the sheer resilience of children like Milo and others, when you give them that hope. Then one day the family comes out on the other side intact, and that child grows and is able to achieve his or her potential.”
He adds, “Our multidisciplinary team takes a moment to grieve if we need to through the tough days. What reignites me is when children ring the bell when they finish chemotherapy, or when I can see them grow up and go to school. That makes the whole difference. It makes everything worth it. Milo’s story is a testament to what can be possible when you merge modern medicine with the generosity of a human being and the unbreakable spirit of a child.”
Levi Buxman, Age 12
On Sunday, Nov. 5, 2023, the Buxman family was turned upside down.
Lauren Buxman, Levi’s mother, says, “For a couple days leading up to his diagnosis, I thought he was looking a little jaundiced. He was really tired and not quite acting like himself. The night before he was diagnosed, we went out with a bunch of moms and sons to a mommy-son event at their school. Normally, Levi is the life of the party and loves to dance. Instead, he just sat on the sides.”
Buxman planned to call Levi’s pediatrician at Akron Children’s Hospital that upcoming Monday to ask the doctor to run labs. However, on Sunday morning, Levi woke up with a 104.3°F fever. Lauren initially suspected the flu and took Levi to urgent care, but the provider didn’t like how fast Levi was breathing and advised taking him to the ER. With her husband Brandon out of town, Buxman called a neighbor to watch her other two children and took Levi to Akron Children’s ER.
Within a couple of hours, the medical team took Levi’s labs and diagnosed him with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia at just 9 years old. By this point, her husband was on his way home, so Buxman asked him to come directly to the hospital because “with leukemia, you don’t get to go home. You get admitted. We started chemo that night,” she says.
Lauren Buxman recalls, “It comes on pretty fast and furious. From the time that it starts to develop to the time that most people are diagnosed is usually two to four weeks.”
Levi was covered in petechiae — pinpoint-sized red, purple or brown spots — and the medical team admitted him to the ICU.
“On Tuesday morning, he got his med port placed. At that point, he did also have pneumonia on top of all of this,” Lauren Buxman says. “Kids with Down syndrome have really small airways, so they go into respiratory distress really easily. Because he had pneumonia as well, they were not able to successfully extubate him, so he ended up intubated for six days.”
After the diagnosis, Levi remained in the hospital for 70 days. Brandon Buxman adds, “We did about 270 days total through his whole treatment.”
How Levi Handled Treatment
Lauren Buxman says that Levi handled the situation with bravery and joy, describing him as “tough as nails and weirdly chipper for a kid as sick as he was. He’s always just been a really happy, go-with-the-flow kid.”
The Buxman family credits Akron Children’s staff for going above and beyond.
Lauren Buxman adds that Levi “really relished in the one-on-one attention he was getting. To this day he loves Akron Children’s. During treatment, one time we pulled in for what I knew was going to be a minimum of a 30-day stay because Levi was getting a pretty hefty wallop of chemo. As I pulled up to the hospital, he spotted it and he screamed, ‘Oh, I’m so excited for my sleepover at the hotel. Are you excited, Mom?’”
“Akron Children’s did such a good job of providing activities for the children,” Brandon Buxman adds. “There were a lot of different therapies. Different famous people come in and see them.”
They spent three Christmas holidays in a row at the hospital, and the staff made those times feel special.
While in the hospital, Levi made a best friend named Liam. Lauren Buxman shares that Levi and Liam had “completely different cancers, completely different treatment plans, but for some reason, any time one of them would get admitted to the hospital, within about 24 hours, the other one would show up and they would stay for weeks at a time.”
The nurses would comment that it was nice to hear laughter coming from the halls as they ran laps, rode bikes and played in the playroom.
This overlapping time allowed the Buxmans to develop a close friendship with Liam’s family.
“Being in a smaller hospital, talking to the staff, and meeting another family and going through all that together helped us,” Lauren Buxman shares. “They were sick, but for the most part were able to find some joy and have fun together.”
Unfortunately, Liam passed away, but the Buxmans remain close with his family.
Levi’s Support System
The Buxman family credits their support system for helping them navigate this road.
“We had a lot of help,” Brandon Buxman says. “Our parents each took a couple weeks here and there to help watch our kids, our dogs and stuff like that.”
The Buxmans also received overwhelming community support.
“We had a lot of support from our church and our school. The superintendent, principal, teachers, the bus driver — all sorts of people helped,” Brandon Buxman shares.
Friends and family organized work parties for yard projects, Lauren’s sister set up a GoFundMe, and someone even bought an artificial tree for their hospital room over Christmas.
The Family’s Biggest Anchor
Lauren Buxman credits their faith in Jesus and her husband’s perspective as their biggest anchors.
She says, “My husband’s motto through all of this has been ‘One day at a time.’ We can’t stress out too much about what’s far ahead. We literally just have to deal with today.”
That focus extended to Levi, whom they taught the mantra, “I can do hard things.”
“Even if things don’t end the way that we want them to, like in the case of Liam, there is hope because they were also people of faith,” Lauren Buxman says. “At least we have that hope that there is something bigger or a bigger purpose one day.”
How Others Can Help a Family Navigating Diagnosis
Brandon Buxman explains that when people hear of a diagnosis, “they want to help, but they don’t necessarily know how to help, and say ‘Let me know if you need anything’. However, you just don’t have the capacity to even come up with something that you really need to ask for.”
Instead, the Buxmans recommend suggesting concrete ways to assist, such as: “Listen, we’re going to bring you a meal. This is what it’s going to be. Do you have any food allergies? We’re going to bring it on this day.” Or, “Hey, we’re going to come take care of some yard work for you,” or “We’re going to come over and we’re going to sit with you, clean your house, watch your other kids, or take care of your dogs.”
“When that happened, it was very helpful because there was no guilt of having to go and ask for it,” he notes.
Lauren Buxman adds, “DoorDash cards were a huge help because we’re trying to feed ourselves while sitting in a hospital room for months at a time, 24 hours a day. That was tricky and expensive.”
Hope to Take Away
Now that Levi has rung the bell to signify he’s cancer-free, the Buxman family hopes others take away a message of hope and faith.
“I can see now that there is some purpose in this,” Brandon Buxman says. “Levi’s doing some really big things. We’ve gotten some really incredible opportunities to share his story, share about Liam’s life, and to talk about childhood cancer, even on a national stage. In June, we went to D.C. with the Children’s Hospital Association and Akron Children’s to lobby on Capitol Hill to senators and congressmen and women for the importance of pediatric medicine, children-specific hospitals, and Medicaid for children.”
At home, Levi’s school held a school-wide clap-out, where everyone wore his favorite color, blue. This story went viral and was featured on NBC Nightly News.
Lauren Buxman, whose early fear with his Down syndrome diagnosis was whether Levi would be accepted, says, “Seeing all of these kids seeking him out for high fives and hugs and cheering just for him was incredible. It was just incredible to see that he’s just like every other kid. He has an extra chromosome, but he’s just like every other kid, and every other kid deserves to be seen, celebrated and have friends.”
“One of these things that we’re thankful for is to have this platform to bring awareness to childhood cancer and to bring awareness to kids with different abilities,” Brandon Buxman adds. “We want to be able to celebrate kids being seen. We want to celebrate kids and families that have gone through something.”