Success Against the Odds

Navid Lively itched continuously. He’d itch throughout the day and wake up itching several times a night. He would scratch himself so hard, he’d bleed. Then he would scratch some more, the raw wounds eventually scabbing over and leaving scars all over his face and body.

Navid (pronounced Nah-veed) is allergic to his own skin, a genetic condition that caused him to lose his hair when he was 2. And he is allergic to a host of ordinary foods, plants and animals. At 4-foot-1 and 56 pounds, he’s by far the smallest boy in his fifth-grade class.

But there’s something else about this 10-year-old.

“He has a huge smile that takes your very breath away,” says Diane Mazurie, principal of Brea Country Hills Elementary School. “He should be a crabby little boy with all the things he has wrong with him or making excuses for not being part of things, but he has this cheerful attitude and just lights up the room.”

It’s because of Navid’s positive, caring attitude in the face of multiple medical problems that Mazurie nominated him for the Every Student Succeeding Award, which is co-sponsored by the Assn. of California School Administrators and MetLife.

Navid, who lives in Fullerton, was among 15 Orange County students who were nominated by school administrators this year for the annual award given to students who have succeeded against the odds. Navid is one of two honorees whose names have been sent on for possible state recognition.

The other Orange County nominee is Juan Becerril, a senior at Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton. Juan’s grades had slipped after he got a job to help support his family, whose home had burned down. Yet he caught up with his schoolwork and is now excelling in school.

Navid’s good-guy attitude extends into the classroom.

“He’s very quick to help anybody on their work,” said Brian Forslund, Navid’s teacher. “It’s not something I have to ask him to do. He’s special. He really is. He never has a negative thing to say about anybody, and he’s well-liked by his peers. Despite all these problems he has, you would never know it from his personality and the way he carries himself.”

Navid’s symptoms first surfaced when he was 3 weeks old and he developed what appeared to be a severe rash. Blood tests six months later showed that Navid had multiple allergies.

“It was very devastating to me,” recalled his mother, Lily, now a single mom who works at a Bank of America branch.

Lively recalls clipping Navid’s fingernails and putting tiny cotton gloves on his hands to keep him from scratching. Nothing helped. One time she put him down for a nap and later discovered that he had bled all over his sheets.

When Navid woke up at night crying and scratching, she would put him in a cool medicinal bath. Then she would put him in his car seat and drive him around the neighborhood until he relaxed.

When Lively took her son out in public, young children would often cry because his scabby skin scared them.

One time when Navid was 3, Lively recalled, they sat down in a restaurant and a teenage girl sitting next to them got up and moved to another table.

“I don’t want to sit next to that,” the girl said.

As Navid got older, Lively said, children would say he’s got cooties. Teenagers and even adults would laugh at him and call him names, she said.

Navid initially faced similar comments from kids at school.

“Some of them were nice. Some would kind of like criticize,” he said, seated at a lunch table at his school late one afternoon with his mother and sister, Sarah, 14. “They’d say, ‘Ew,’ or they wouldn’t want to be by me.”

Asked how that made him feel, Navid paused, then said, “Kind of sad.”

Navid, whose skin is scab-free but bears tiny, faint reminders of his scars, said he tries to ignore negative comments. But while his mother said Mazurie and the school’s teachers have handled the situation well, there’s no question her son has felt the sting.

Before Navid can visit a friend’s house, his mother makes a list of everything that he cannot eat or come in contact with.

“Which is a big list,” Lively said.

Navid is allergic to meat, dairy products, nuts, legumes and all grains except for rice and corn. He’s also allergic to grass, flowers, trees and fur-bearing animals.

Navid, who takes eight medications, also has severe cases of asthma and eczema. And he risks blindness if he doesn’t lubricate his eyes twice a day.

Dealing with all of Navid’s medical problems “is a way of life for us,” said Lively, who receives help from Sarah.

“We’ve been through everything together, and my daughter is wonderful,” Lively said. “She tells me, ‘Mom, don’t worry about him. I will take care of him.’ If I’m not around, she just takes charge.”

Lively said Navid’s doctors thought he’d grow out of his allergies by the time he was 4. But he undergoes blood and skin tests every year, she said, “and it’s not getting better.”

A change of dosage in one of his medications caused Navid’s allergies to worsen last fall, and he missed 34 days of school in two months. “He was in a lot of pain [because of his itching] and couldn’t go to school; he couldn’t wear his clothes,” Lively said.

Lately, though, Navid has had only mild itching. A combination of prednisone ointment, an experimental drug and another medication has curtailed his itching to the point where he wakes up only occasionally at night.

“When he was younger it was kind of harder,” Lively said. “But I’m a very positive person. I teach him to be strong and just have a good attitude about life.”

“I’ve never heard him complain about his problems,” said Keith Connelly, 10, one of Navid’s classmates.

“He’s always extremely positive,” Forslund said. “He’s just the bright part of your day.”