June 4, 2025 
My earliest memories of the barn are of my family.
Saturday mornings, my sister and I would go riding at Childress Rodgers Stables and then after we’d hang out with Grandma Janet. Mom always took us to the barn. And even when we started driving, she’d show up there. Dad always made time to watch us compete. The first show that I went to my whole family was there.
Growing up, I just always had a constant support system everywhere I looked.
I’m 19 now and in college 13 hours from home, so my family hasn’t been able to attend my events this year. But my support system has only gotten bigger. Now I have an entire collegiate equestrian team behind me too.
Most of my IHSA team know that I have Cystic Fibrosis (CF). Or they know that I have “something medical.” I was telling one of them the other day that I was on the fence about sharing my story. And they said, “If ever you decide to do it, you have an entire team behind you.”
I’ve known these people for nine months. But it made me feel like, okay, maybe I can do this. Maybe I can try.
***
I was diagnosed a few months after I was born.
My parents didn’t know they were carriers of the CFTR gene, the one responsible for Cystic Fibrosis. They just knew I wasn’t right. The medical term was “failure to thrive.” I couldn’t put weight on. I was always hungry. I was just a very uncomfortable baby.
When they took me to the pediatrician, the doctor tasted my sweat and said, “Your daughter definitely has Cystic Fibrosis.” When I sweat, I produce a higher sodium content than the average person, so she was able to tell from how salty it was, which is kind of gross and weird, but also kind of cool at the same time.
I was put on regular pancreatic enzymes—I don’t produce my own with CF—to help me breakdown food and absorb nutrients. Then I was able to start being a real human.
That was the beginning of my story.
With CF, one size doesn’t fit all. What your future looks like is always a bit of an open-ended question. So when the doctors broke it down for my parents, it was “We don’t what the progression is going to look like. We don’t know if one day she’s going to get sick and maybe not come back from it. At the end of the day, it’s a degenerative disease.”
But the one thing they stressed was that “Alex is a person with CF. She is not a Cystic Fibrosis patient. She is always going to be a human being before her medical diagnoses.”
And, to their credit, that’s how we’ve always approached it.
When I was two, I wasn’t able to sit up on my own. My chest wall wouldn’t expand. I was still incredibly weak. My mom is an occupational therapist, and my grandma is a physical therapist, so they thought let’s throw her on a horse.
For someone with CF, that was a risk.
One of the effects of my condition is that I cannot breakdown my own mucus well. I get bad sinus infections. The mucus in my lungs builds up. Being around dust and dirt makes it worse and there’s really no way to be around horses and not be exposed to dust and dirt. My mom got a lot a backlash about it from the Cystic Fibrosis Facebook Group she was involved in at the time. Like, why would you put her around all of that dust and bacteria?
I was always glad that she kind of gave the middle finger to those moms. I think part of her thought, let’s try this for Alex’s physical health, and then when she started to see me blossom beyond a medical case that made her keep going.
I did hippotherapy for six years.
When I was eight, we decided to take it a step further. I started taking lessons with my current trainer—and it skyrocketed from there. I rode lesson ponies and then leased horses. I rode on the Interscholastic Equestrian Association (IEA) team in high school. Last summer, I was a working student for German show jumper Wilhelm Genn. It was the coolest experience. Now, I ride for Louisiana State University (LSU).
Horses have been that one constant throughout my life that have shown me what I’m capable of, regardless of my health status.
***
When you’re a kid with serious medical issues, you have to grow up very quickly. You have a medication regimen, a treatment regimen. You see doctors every two and a half months. The CF program starts preparing you for when you’re on your own at a very young age.
So I knew very early on that I’m not your average person. And so did my peers. As a kid, that’s one of the hardest parts.
I had to go to the nurse before every meal in middle school. I had a heat index problem. So if it was over 95 degrees, I wasn’t allowed out at recess. I missed school for medical procedures and then I’d come back and everyone’s asking, “Where were you?” And, I didn’t want to tell them I just had sinus surgery.
It can be very embarrassing, too. In high school, I had colon blockages, so I had to drink laxative regularly and as a teenage girl to be like, “Hold on, let me go get my giant jug of laxatives,”it’s humiliating. There’s always part of you that’s like be your own person! But in the back of my head, it’s just hard.
And from the CF, I developed a lot of joint problems. I was diagnosed with arthritis and hypermobility at 13. I developed diabetes at 16. So there’s times that I would be very, very weak and it was hard to ride or I’d have to get off the horse because I was in so much pain.
Even now, if I take like a week off and then go to ride, I’m winded way faster than most people would be.
But I would say the hardest pill to swallow is that it’s never going to get better. There’s no cure for CF. This is how it’s always going to be. I’m in college. But I don’t get to just be a college girl. I’ve got to be a college girl with Cystic Fibrosis.
And it’s something I’m still working through. I used to be very angry about it. Now I’ve kind of accepted that no amount of being upset is going to ever change my CF, so I might as well do something good about it. Or at least try to. I’m still allowed to be upset about it. Absolutely, that’s valid. But eventually I’ve got to get up and keep moving, you know?
***
I knew that I wanted a ride in college. I only applied to schools that had IHSA teams. LSU offered my an academic scholarship and when I visited with my dad, we were impressed.
They were very accommodating. I have a private room and a bathroom in my dorm. I have consideration for tardies and absences. I have allowed technologies in classes, like my glucose monitor for my diabetes.
And I got into the Honors College. I took college courses in high school and enough of the credits transferred that I can get my undergrad in three years at LSU. I’m a political science major. I want to go to law school. My plan is to go into medical malpractice to help people that haven’t been as fortunate as I have been with my doctors.
A scholarship to LSU doesn’t mean you’re automatically on the IHSA team. You still have to try out. They look at your past riding experience and the level you’ve competed at, then assign you to a division. After tryouts, your assigned to the travel or club team. I made the travel team for limit over fences and flats.
Competing on an IHSA team is really cool. My team is so close knit. Everyone is so supportive and it’s pretty cool to have an entire team cheering for you at the ingate. I was looking for my college family, and my new team gave me that.
Like I said, most of them know I’m dealing with a medical condition. Or if they didn’t know, they have picked up on it. When we leave a show, I’m the one that’s sleeping on the bus. My energy levels get so low, because I am sweating out all my sodium.
But it’s also incredibly rewarding. It’s my first season doing IHSA and I earned enough point to advance to Regionals and then to Zones in Savannah, Georgia. I finished top two at both to qualify for Nationals. And like so many riding milestones before, my mom was there with me, too. The amount of people that reached out to me to say “Congrats!” and “You deserved this!” has really been the coolest thing ever.
It was everything I’ve worked for all these years. It was this moment of like, holy moly, I did it. I used to not be able to step on a horse. I literally defied the odds of my medical diagnosis and I made it all the way to Nationals.
***
I wanted to share my story for myself and also for my mom.
When you have medical issues, your relationship with your parents can be rocky. My mom is also a little bit my nurse and my manager. That’s a tough balance to strike. I owe her so much more credit than I can ever put into words.
My mom was the one that pushed me to start to accept my CF and everything that comes with it. She was always like, “I want you to realize you do ABCDEFG and you do it with the CF. It has not stopped you. Every single thing you’ve accomplished in life has been alongside the CF.”
I’m still coming to terms with that. And honestly, it’s an ongoing thing.
I got really sick December of 2023. And I just remember thinking all those cheesy little sayings: You’re only given one shot in this life. And I’m not going to let my lack of a working pancreas rule that. Life has so much more to offer than your challenges.
I still have days when I feel like it’s just so unfair that I will never get to experience a life without CF. I’m always going to have to take these meds when I eat. I’m always going to have to keep myself in check about it or I could end up in the hospital. I’m always going to wake up and have to give myself insulin.
But at the end of the day, I’m able to be a functional human being. I’m still able to ride. I have lots of friends, and have great relationships with the people around me. It doesn’t define who I am as a human.
I used to be very angry about my diagnosis, but now, I’d say I’m borderline thankful for it. CF has brought a lot of challenges into my life, but it also brought horses and all the people and all of the great emotions and experiences and opportunities that have come with that—and I wouldn’t want to change it. Would I have even ever ridden without the CF? I have no way of knowing that.
I do know I’m proud of the person I’m becoming, alongside CF.
And it actually feels really good to talk about it. That’s been interesting as well. Putting my story out there is helping me accept it. And I hope that it might help other people, too.
This story is brought to you by Three Mares, a proud supporter of IHSA, IEA and the Michael Nyuis Foundation. Over the next 10 years Three Mares is committed to giving a minimum of $1 Million USD to non-profits serving athletes like Alex Ronningen. We’re investing in change. Learn more at thethreemares.com.
