Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times

Levi Mayo, who turns 8 on Feb. 29, sits with his bounty of Leap Year mail.

Evelio Contreras | The Roanoke Times

As her son Levi Mayo gets ready to play outside, Melina Brown tells him to stay out of trouble a week before his Leap Year birthday.

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• Happy birthday, Levi!

You say it's your birthday

Earlier this month, Extra asked readers who have leap year birthdays to share their stories with us. Here are the responses.

Melina Brown went into labor on the evening of Feb. 28, 2000, and hoped for a fast delivery.

Leap day seemed like an odd birthday for a child, she thought. But Levi Mayo, her second son, screamed his way into the world at 7:01 on the rarest morning of all.

Leap day, or Feb. 29, appears on the calendar once every four years -- a long wait between birthdays for leap year babies. For Levi and his family, the years since his last true birthday have brought a stubborn illness and slow recovery.

Levi is now almost 8, though his family teases that he's turning 2. He wants a Nintendo DS for his birthday. He likes cartwheels, the band Green Day and rough-housing with his brother Gus. Here is something he doesn't like: taking medicine.

Several months after Levi's first leap year birthday in 2004, the headaches started. He had a stiff neck and once slept for 18 hours. At first, doctors suspected a sinus infection or a pulled muscle. "I knew there was something more to it," his mother said.

Medulloblastoma is considered the most common malignant brain tumor that strikes children. When Levi entered Carilion Roanoke Community Hospital in September 2004, the cancer had crept to his spine.

Brown, a careworn woman of 34, recalls many details of the treatment that followed. The times and dates of surgeries and chemotherapy sessions, the number of radiation treatments (31), what she and Levi wore on certain days (a pink flowered shirt for her, a silky Batman shirt on him when the bad news arrived).

Her son dropped to 26 pounds, so slight that she could circle Levi's thigh with her fingers. His breathing became difficult, she said, and gave a heavy wheeze. The initial surgery reset the clock on his development.

Brown asks Levi: "Do you remember when you couldn't talk?"

She and Wayne Brown, her second husband, sat in overstuffed chairs in the living room of their Craig County ranch house. School was just out, book bags were tossed around the room.

Levi: "Couldn't walk. Couldn't talk. Couldn't move." His voice, which went silent for several months following surgery, still falters.

Melina: "But you were still there, right?"

Levi: "Yeah."

Melina: "He was still in his body, it just wouldn't work."

The low point came in May 2005. "I'm just so scared all the time," she wrote to an online support group. "I plan his funeral in my head sometimes, which is so stupid I know, but it's almost like if I plan it, I won't have to do it, you know?"

Chemotherapy ended in July 2005, and Levi moved from a wheelchair to a walker to holding his mother's hand. He rejoined his dad, Mike Mayo, at work for ride-alongs in his dump truck. "He's always been into the heavy equipment," Mayo said of his son.

There are still concerns about a recurrence, learning difficulties or the toll the disease and its cure took on his body. Levi struggles with balance and speech. But he has dropped from a dozen prescriptions to a single medication for his thyroid. Now, he can somersault across the blue carpet in the living room.

Thinking back on the past four years, Melina Brown said, "I don't let little stuff bother me" -- who gets the better parking space, who's first in line at McDonald's -- "Who cares?"

Levi padded back into the living room eating a Pop-Tart, crumbs dropping onto the blue carpet.

"Get in the kitchen with that, you turkey," his mom said.

Levi returned to school in August 2005. He repeated a year of preschool, and is now in his second year of kindergarten at McCleary Elementary School in New Castle.

There, last Friday, Melissa Whiting's class gathered around a colorful map of the United States for a short geography lesson. Which meant "it's time to look at Levi's cards," she said.

In recent weeks, friends and supporters have sent more than 300 birthday cards to the leap year boy in her class. Whiting read aloud the names of states that had sent cards, adding a small sticker to each on the map: Alaska, Alabama, Arizona and many more.

Among the day's pile was a letter from Gov. Tim Kaine. "To Master Levi Mayo," Whiting read. The kindergartners gasped. "MASTER!" Two other state governors have also sent cards. The tycoon Donald Trump, too.

"We do a lot of stuff for Levi," classmate Jeffrey Hannah, 7, explained later, such as spelling and helping Levi draw snakes and dragons. "I like doing it."

Shortly, the afternoon snack arrived, and the children dug into ice cream bars and cups. Levi took a bite of vanilla ice cream, then stood sleepily and leaned into the arms of his special education aide, Angie Elmore.

"I got a letter from ..." Levi announced, then paused, "the governor of Virginia."

Indeed, the letter rested on Whiting's desk in a manila envelope. It read: "We know you will have lots of adventures ahead of you as you grow and learn."

And tonight's adventure is a pizza party, a birthday cake and the opening of all the birthday cards.