Morgan Panzirer

From Fear to Finish Line: How I Took Back My Life from T1D

I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (T1D) on March 22, 2007. As a little six year old with a perpetual fear of needles, it is safe to say this was my worst nightmare. With no T1D in my family and very little knowledge of the disease and what it meant for my future, my parents and I were forced to adapt and learn about this new way of life.
After two weeks of kicking and screaming every time I needed a shot to eat or when my blood sugar was high, I finally decided that I was going to take control in any way I could. I sat in my tiny pink chair and held the needle an inch away from my skin. After what felt like an eternity of fear and hesitation, I finally mustered up the courage to puncture my own skin and give myself my first shot at just six years old. It is a moment I will never forget. In a lot of ways, I think giving myself my first shot was a pivot point for me and my future. To me, it set the tone that T1D is tough, but that I was tougher. There were going to be difficult times with T1D (and otherwise) in my life, but it wasn’t about how they impacted me, it was about how I responded to them.

I have been fortunate enough to have been a T1D advocate for much of my life as I grew up through middle and high school. In parallel to this advocacy, I had been witnessing first hand how uneducated the general public was on this disease. Even my high school health teacher did not differentiate between type 1 and type 2 diabetes when teaching our class about the conditions. I’m not blaming her at all, but to me, this is so much more complex than a paragraph in a textbook. This is mine, and so many others’ lives, and I wanted to do my part in raising awareness about what T1D is, and what it means to essentially act like a pancreas day in and day out.
It was at this point that I started journaling about my experiences. I wrote about the misconceptions I experienced, frustrations, hard days, and the things I was doing to be an advocate for the T1D community. It became a diary of my life; it was therapeutic for me. I worked on it for a while, and then put it down in the midst of the busyness of life.

A few years later when I was in high school, I happened to be flipping through old projects and rediscovered it. I decided I would update it a bit, and add more recent experiences from my life. While trying to incorporate the old writing with my voice as a then-older-high-schooler, I decided to fill in the gaps by making it a full book, where the older pieces I had written would serve as excerpts from my younger self.

After completing it, I asked one of my English teachers to review what I had written, just to see if she thought it was worth continuing. I was incredibly surprised when she came back to me and said, “Morgan, you have to get this out to the world!” I worked with her for about a year, and then began trying to pitch myself to publication companies. Ultimately, I ended up signing with a publisher and publishing my autobiography, Actually, I Can. in June 2020, right after finishing my freshman year of college.

One piece of T1D that I always struggled with since my diagnosis was exercise. In particular, running was always incredibly challenging for me. I was never a runner. In fact, I couldn’t run a single mile up until 2020. I found that no matter how much of a temp basal I did prior or how many free carbs I ate, my blood sugar would plummet fifteen minutes into a run. This was always frustrating to me, but I never really liked (nor was good at) running, so I decided maybe I wasn’t meant to be a runner. Instead, I would focus on horseback riding; a sport I did competitively from age six through college. It felt like riding was my safe space from T1D; I knew what I needed to do to keep my numbers in range (most of the time), and I felt like that was one area of my life where T1D couldn’t limit me.

Right when COVID hit, I was bored sitting around in my sweatpants (like everyone else), and wanted to figure out a way to escape home for a little while each day. I decided maybe I should circle back to running and try to figure out a way, even if for five or ten minutes, to run without my blood sugar dropping.

Because it seemed impossible, I wanted to do it. I was determined to find a way. After months of trial and error, I successfully ran for fifteen minutes without dropping. Slowly from there, I started increasing the time I ran by five minute increments.

My running journey has been slow and steady. In 2023, I decided to sign-up for something I never in a million years thought I would be able to do; a half marathon. I couldn’t believe it, but I signed up to run the Disney Princess Half Marathonin February 2024 with Breakthrough T1D. After months of training, I did it. I completed the half marathon, and it was an accomplishment that meant so much to me. Other people run half marathons all the time, but it meant even more to me because no one knew how hard I had to fight to even get to that starting line. When I crossed the finish line, I looked at my mom and said, “We are doing this again next year!” And we did. But the following year (which was this past February), I decided to challenge myself even further both mentally and physically. My mom and I signed up for the Disney Princess Challenge: a 5k Friday, 10k Saturday, and half marathon Sunday. I know what you’re thinking, I thought it was insane when I signed up, too. To be totally honest, I registered not sure if I would ever be able to do it, but I was sure as hell going to die trying.

Again after months of training, I showed up to Florida ready to show T1D that it could control pieces of me, but that running was my domain now. Friday morning at 4am, the 5k went off without a hitch. Saturday, as the fireworks shot into the air to indicate the start of the 10k, I got a Dexcom alert that my blood sugar was 53. It’s safe to say I panicked. I had never started a run low before. But I had trained for months for this moment, and T1D was not going to rain on my parade. Feeling nauseous as ever, I ate my energy chews that I was saving for the middle of the race, and started running. I monitored my blood sugar and adjusted constantly, but ultimately I was able to push through and finish the 10k. Sunday morning, I was a ball of nerves. My body and mind were exhausted, but I wasn’t done yet. I completed the third day of the Disney Princess Challenge, the half marathon, and nearly broke into tears when I crossed that final finish line.

If you had told me in 2020 that I would have completed a half marathon, I would have called you crazy. But a 5k, 10k, and half marathon in 3 days? I would have rolled my eyes laughing and said, “There’s just no way.”

As we all know, T1D adds a layer of complexity to everything in life. That’s just the nature of the beast. But the good news is that it doesn’t have to stop you. That was something I proved to myself not when I crossed that final finish line just a few months ago, but from the moment I laced up my running sneakers for the very first time. Instead of accepting defeat from something difficult like I did initially, I figured out that it is so much more rewarding to look T1D dead in the eye and think to yourself, “Maybe I won’t today, but I will one day. Just watch me. ” I learned early on that I can be the hero of my own journey. T1D may have changed my story, but I own the pen to write the ending.