Has this ever happened to you?

I was driving home last night in heavy traffic. All of a sudden I got the shakes. I mean full on vibrating of my arms. I also felt oddly surreal. Like I was in slow motion and had less of a concept of the space around me. I had an overwhelming desire for something to eat. I pulled off the highway and immediately ate some trail mix then went into the mall and ate some soup. It took about a half hour for the shaking to stop.

Earlier that day I had gone to a family gathering and did eat a small sampling of some pies. I also drank a couple glasses of rhubarb punch that was fairly sour. It was delicious so I asked for the recipe. Well...it was made with 3 cups of sugar, a bottle of Wink and a bottle of ginger ale. It did not taste sweet at all because of the rhubarb and pink lemonade mix.

I am not diabetic but have seen my sister go through the shakes when her sugar is low, and this reminds me of her when that happens. But I am thinking based on what I took in that my sugar would have been plenty high. This also didn't occur until several hours after the pie, like 4 hours and about 1.5 hours after the punch.

Any suggestions? I am 9 months post RNY.

Thank you, Chris 

It sounds like low blood sugar. But lots of folks get reactive hypoglycemia after surgery. It is different than regular hypoglycemia, and must be treated differently. 

At four hours, the pie was most likely not affecting your sugars much anymore. I'm not too sure about the punch.

She probably "fixed"  her RH due to pie eating when she drunk the punch.... I can eat lots of suggary stuff all day long as long with no niticeble side effects as long as I eat not a lot at one time and continue eating that all day long.... Or every 1 hour or so... 

Sounds like you dumped. http://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/dumping-syndrome-causes-foods-treatments

Not dumping. Dumping happens pretty quickly after you eat something high sugar. This was much too long afterward.

In my second year I had a couple of hypoglycemia episodes that came out of nowhere.  I hadn't eaten anything with sugar or high carbs, just what I always ate and I ate on my regular schedule.

The first time was out of the blue.  I felt the same as you are describing.  I ate something and felt better.

The next time it happened I took my blood sugar and it was in the 30s!  I started keeping things with me in case in happened again.

I would say it happened less than a dozen times and it hasn't happened since.  But I still carry a glucose monitor just in case.  

If you don't have one I would get one and keep it handy to check if it happens again.

And I won't lecture you about why you shouldn't be testing the waters with punch and pie when you are only 9 months out.  I'll save that for another day ;)

RH = reactive hypoglycemia. Google that. Very common post op RNY..

Thank you everyone for your comments. I will make sure to be more careful in the future.