CONQUERING CROHN’S
Jamie Baril’s 12 year battle with Crohn’s disease has been filled with pain and adversity, but his love for the mountains inspires him to persevere.
Written by Micah Evangelista
Jamie Baril sits in his bathroom, exhausted. It’s 4 a.m., and gut-wrenching pain has allowed barely any sleep all night. Outside the foggy bathroom window, eight inches of snow have fallen on a cold December morning at his home in Bellingham, Washington. He planned to go skiing at Mt. Baker, but now he simply wants to sleep for a few uninterrupted hours.
The ongoing turmoil in his gut won’t allow it. Over the last month, there have been so many similar mornings he’s lost count. This isn’t a hangover that can be cured with a cup of coffee, and it isn’t food poisoning that will vacate in 24 hours. This is Crohn’s Disease, an incurable illness that has cast a shadow on Baril’s life since he was diagnosed with it over 12 years ago. But he’s determined to continue battling his condition for as long as it takes.
Crohn’s is a bowel disease that causes chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. The body’s immune system is built to attack foreign invaders, but with Crohn’s Disease, something unknown causes the immune system to launch an attack upon itself. Symptoms include persistent diarrhea, an urgent need to move bowels, loss of appetite and weight loss. Baril was born in Denver, Colorado and moved to Sammamish, Washington when he was 4 years old. Baril’s parents instilled in him a love for the outdoors and in particular, skiing and mountain biking.
“Luckily, I was born into the lifestyle,” Baril said. “Both of my parents were on the race team at Western Colorado University when they met, so skiing was a huge part of their lives.” He was the firstborn of three, and was lucky to get significant exposure to skiing because his parents were in their most athletic state when he was a child.
“Essentially, I was skiing on my mom’s back before I could stand up. As soon as I was on my feet, I was skiing,” Baril said.
With his home being 35 minutes from Snoqualmie Pass, there was no shortage of exceptional ski resorts nearby. “I grew up skiing at Alpental, which is a special little mountain with a lot of steep terrain, and is one of four base areas at the pass,” Baril said.
He also shared his love for skiing with his two younger sisters, Emily and Erica, as they grew up.
“He always encouraged me to do stuff that scared me in the mountains. Whether that was dropping into a sketchy run, encouraging me to hit a rail that I didn’t think I’d be able to do or leading me up a boot pack,” Erica said. “He definitely helped me a lot with confidence in skiing and my love for getting after it in the mountains.”
Sports were a significant part of Baril’s adolescence, and he played almost all of them throughout middle school. Eventually, skiing became his top priority.
He wanted to be a ski racer, to follow in his parents’ footsteps. But his upbringing coincided with the birth of freestyle skiing, and once he saw a Warren Miller ski movie in sixth grade, it completely changed his perception.
“I saw Ian McIntosh ripping this fast powder line and I was like, holy cow, I want to be in those movies, too,” Baril said. “I didn’t know what it took to become a professional skier. So I skied a lot, and I fell a lot, too.
I broke my thumbs, wrists and collarbones, but no matter what, it kept pulling me into that lifestyle. I was hooked before I even knew I was hooked.”
But at age 14, something unexpected happened, interrupting the ski career he dreamed of and life as he knew it. Apart from broken bones, he was a normal, healthy child until this point.
“It was over spring break of eighth grade that I got really gut sick,” Baril said. “The kind of sickness that you can tell is a problem.” He was tested and was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease.
“It was like a switch flipped and my gut health went downhill,” Baril said. “Aside from being a kid who loved skiing, that became the other primary part of my life that consumed most of my attention as a teenager,”
Crohn’s is a chronic illness, which means it often causes lifelong side effects. Belonging to a family of conditions known as inflammatory bowel diseases or IBD, it affects an estimated 3 million Americans, according to the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation. Everyone is equally at risk.
Researchers believe the chronic illness is an interaction between genes, immune system and something in the environment. Treatment is not simple. No magic pill can cure all symptoms, and it’s different for everyone.
“I was getting taken out of school frequently for blood tests and doctor’s appointments… during my school life it detracted from my ability to be present in school.”
He was first prescribed Remicade and Prednisone. Remicade is an infusion drug to reduce the symptoms. Every four to six weeks he was treated intravenously at an infusion center, and this continued until the age of 18.
Prednisone is a commonly used anti-inflammatory steroid that he’s been on and off throughout the entire 12-year process. It had side effects such as weakening bones and joints, increased agitation and making it hard to sleep.
“Trying to be treated by these things that were helping but also hurting at the same time was a really obscure experience to have as a teenager, not really knowing how to deal with it yet because I hadn’t figured that out,” Baril said.
That four-year period was more of a battle of learning how to deal with the chronic illness than a time to focus on social life or school, he explained.
“Flare-ups would involve these cramp-like symptoms where you feel like you’re having a boxing match going on in your stomach,” Baril said. “It’s not uncommon for that to happen and when it does, it’s your alarm clock. Then you have 15 to 30 seconds to find somewhere to go to the bathroom because your body is forcing stuff out that’s not ready to be forced out. As a result, you’re not getting all of the nutrition that you need, so it’s just a waterfall of one thing leading to the next.”
An unhealthy anxiety surrounding the disease and its symptoms overcame Baril. He became nervous about what would happen if he had a flare-up in a situation where he couldn’t escape.
“If you can’t make it somewhere and you’re around a bunch of people, how are you going to explain that?” Baril said. “You don’t want to be thinking about it all the time, but it’s something that when it happens to you repetitively it ends up sticking in there as a deep, hardwired anxiety.” For Baril, that anxiety became a problem even when the Crohn’s symptoms weren’t flaring.
Since the worst symptoms often appeared in the morning, it was difficult for him to make it to first and second period classes in high school.
“I skidded through the finish line with just enough credits to graduate because I was always playing catch-up,” Baril said. He didn’t believe he had the confidence to succeed at a university, so he decided not to go.
When he turned 19, he sought natural changes in his treatment in search of success. He cut out gluten and sought therapy to work through anxiety. He stopped all prescribed medication and began using cannabis as a natural way to ease his symptoms. The cannabis bolstered his appetite and also allowed him to sleep. He saw steady improvement, but nothing would last. Painful flare-ups continued to hit him periodically.
Baril found peace on the ski slopes. He outgrew the city-league ski racing that his parents coached at Snoqualmie Pass every Friday, and instead would ski from Summit West to Summit Central where the terrain park was.
“Every opportunity there was to go, I just went.”
He now wanted to be a slopestyle athlete, learn big tricks and participate in competitions. He traveled around Washington, Oregon and Idaho competing and making more friends and connections. Around age 20, he became sponsored by local companies K2 Skis, NWT3K and Evo.
Like his parents, Baril discovered a passion for coaching the younger generation of skiers. He works at Mt. Hood ski camps, located near the small town of Government Camp, Oregon over the summer, and during the winter coaches the Alpental Freeride Team.
“I fell in love with coaching right away,” Baril said. “It’s a cool feeling to help mold a group of teenagers into better skiers and show them the things within the sport that made me fall in love with it.” The joy that coaching brought him was therapeutic in fighting his disease, but he still endured major setbacks along the way.
Twice, flare-ups reached a severe level. When he was 21, he crashed on a ski rail and smashed the iliac crest of his pelvis. Inflammation from the injury exacerbated his Crohn’s.
Once again he was put on medication to alleviate the symptoms. He was prescribed Methotrexate, Cimzia and Prednisone. Baril had to learn to inject Cimzia directly into his abdomen with a syringe. After five months, the combination of those drugs pulled him out of his flare, but side effects such as nausea and potential hair loss from Methotrexate scared Baril, so he stopped taking all prescribed medication again.
“A few years down the road in October, 2018, it hit me really bad again,” Baril said. His gut health slipped harder and faster than it had in a long time. “All of a sudden I was back in it again, and was as sick as I was when I was 15.”+
Baril had just turned 26 and lost the health insurance coverage that was provided by his parents until that point. Because of this unsteady ground, he was unsure how to find treatment. While trying to find insurance and a new treatment regimen, he lost 25 pounds.
“You could see it in my body that I was losing weight fast,” Baril said. Baril was unable to retrain nutrients and was tired and sore most of the day because of it.
“It’s never easy to see someone you love experience pain and discomfort on a daily basis,” said Baril’s girlfriend Merrill Fitts, who is a fourth-year Western student. “His pain took him down some days and it really bummed him out.”
Fitts recognizes Baril’s resiliency.
“Jamie is tough and full of stoke. His strength and attitude in dealing with his Crohn’s is very admirable,” Fitts said. “Sports are Jamie’s favorite outlet. He describes skiing as a way to express himself, carving turns into the mountain Skiing, biking and being a part of mountain culture brings Jamie to life.” His love for skiing never wavered despite the daily hardships he faced.
“Having [skiing] taken away from me this year was a reminder of how much I missed it,” Baril said. “Fighting the disease is a job that doesn’t stop. This particular slip-up along my journey was an eyeopener. The lesson I’ve learned is that I have to stick with it.”
This summer Baril was able to coach the adult ski camp at Mt. Hood. Coaching the adults introduced him to a wide variety of people from different ages who all bring new experiences and backgrounds to the table. He’s found that while giving pointers on skis is extremely gratifying, sharing life advice and perspectives with new people everyday is equally satisfying.
Baril is optimistic and determined. He hopes for less sleepless nights and more powder-filled mornings. He hopes his journey inspires others to find their passion and meet their adversities head on.
