What an A1C of 11.7 Actually Feels Like From the Inside

By: Ray Taylor. Not a Doctor.

If something feels wrong in your body and you do not have the words for it, I want to talk to you. Maybe you are tired in a way that sleep does not fix. Maybe you are thirsty all the time and up half the night. Maybe a cut on your foot is taking forever to close. Maybe a number on a lab report scared you and nobody sat down and told you what it actually means to live there. I lived there. My A1C was 11.7, and I want to put plain words to what that feels like from the inside, because when it was happening to me, I thought I was the only one, and I thought I was just getting old, or weak, or lazy. I was none of those things. I was sick, and my blood sugar was telling on me.

First, what that number even is

An A1C is the average of your blood sugar over the last two to three months. Mine came back at 11.7, which a nurse told me was extremely dangerous, and she was right. I am not going to re-tell that whole phone call here, because I already wrote about the day the call came in. This post is about something different. Not the phone call. The body. What it actually feels like to walk around carrying a number like that, before anybody puts a name to it.

Here is the plain-language version of what is going on inside you at a number like that. Your body stopped listening to insulin, and your liver keeps dumping sugar into your blood even when you have not eaten. So the sugar just sits there, high, hour after hour, with nowhere to go. That backed-up sugar is what you are feeling. Every symptom on this list traces back to it.

The tired that sleep does not fix

This is the one that fooled me the longest. I was exhausted. Not sleepy, exhausted, the kind where you sit down and your whole body feels like it is made of wet sand. And the cruel part is that the fuel was right there in my blood. The sugar was high. But my cells could not get to it, because the body had stopped listening to the insulin that is supposed to open the door and let it in. So I was running on empty in a tank that was overflowing. I thought I was just getting older. I thought I needed more coffee. What I needed was for somebody to tell me my blood sugar was the reason I could barely make it through the afternoon.

The thirst, and being up all night

I was thirsty all the time, and I could not figure out why. I would drink and drink and stay thirsty. And I was up two and three times a night going to the bathroom. There is a reason for that, and it is simple once you hear it. When your blood sugar runs that high, your body tries to flush the extra sugar out through your urine, and it pulls water along with it. So you lose water, you get thirsty, you drink more, you are up all night, and you wake up dragging. I thought I just had a small bladder and a big thirst. I had high blood sugar, plain and simple.

The fog, and the slow healing

There was a fog over everything. I would lose my train of thought, forget why I walked into a room, read the same line three times. And things on my body stopped healing right. The thing that should have been my loudest alarm was a foot surgery back in 2017 that just would not heal. That was the first real clue, years before I took any of this seriously. High blood sugar slows your healing and messes with your blood flow, especially in your feet. I did not connect the dots. I figured the foot was just stubborn. It was not the foot. It was the sugar.

The fear, and the shame underneath it

Here is the part nobody writes down, and it might be the heaviest one. I was scared. My readings were running over 400. I ended up in a hospital with a blood sugar of 450. And under the fear was something worse, shame. I thought this was my fault, that I had done this to myself, that a stronger man would have handled it. So I hid it. I did what they told me, took a pill, took a pamphlet, and quietly decided I was a lost cause. That shame did more damage than any single meal ever did, because shame keeps you sitting still. If you are feeling that right now, I need you to hear me. You are not weak. You are dealing with a body that stopped listening to insulin. That is a problem you can work on, not a character flaw.

Why I am telling you the felt version and not just the numbers

Because numbers on a page did not reach me. I needed somebody to describe the inside, the tired, the thirst, the night trips to the bathroom, the fog, the fear, so I could finally say “that is me, that is what is happening, and it has a name.” Once it has a name, it has a way out. And there is a way out. My most recent lab, in March of 2026, came back at 5.5. I got there with food, fasting, and movement, and zero diabetes medication, over about three and a half years. You can see where I am now at 5.5 here. I came off all my diabetes medication, which at the time was three drugs including insulin, and I want to be honest that I did that on my own and against medical advice. That is my testimony, not your instructions. Do not change your medication without your doctor.

I am not promising you my exact result. Remission is what happened for me, and I cannot hand it to you in a guarantee. What I can tell you is that the feeling you are carrying right now is not just “getting old,” and it is not the end of your story. It is high blood sugar, it has a name, and the door out is not as locked as it felt to me when I was living at 11.7.

What to do with this today

If everything above sounds like your body, the first move is not a panic and it is not a pharmacy run. It is one small, honest step. The free 24 Hour Reset guide lays out the exact first day I used to start pulling that number down. It is the thing standard care never handed me. Get the free 24 Hour Reset guide here.

And if you want the whole story, the fear, the hospital, the day I started walking, and every step after, I put all of it in one place. The complete account is in my book, Type 2 Ain’t My Type: The True Story of My Divorce from Diabetes Using Food, Fasting, and Movement.

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

This is not medical advice. Do not change your medication without your doctor.