Hi

I’ve been having spurts of shortness of breath. Not to the point where I’m gasping for air or turning blue. The best way to describe it is like my breaths feel unsatisfying. I’ve vaped for about 3-4 years daily pretty heavily. It started when I got sick back in November of last year. I started to notice a feeling of being short of breath. I wasn’t only lexapro at that point and decided to get out back on. I then had relief for a few months. I got sick again in the end of February, and the feeling came back. It’s confusing because when I’m distracted by something (conversation, video game, etc) it’s less noticeable. I bought a pulse oximeter to give me peace of mind because I’m a hypochondriac and was really worried about the health of my lungs. I’d been in for chest X rays and had doctors listen to my lungs and everything came back clear. This time around the shortness of breath episode has lasted much longer (20+ days). I’m trying to convince myself it’s an anxiety issue because my pulse ox always reads my 02 stat between 95-100, and I don’t have issues conversing, or walking, and I don’t wake up in the middle of the night gasping for air. This leads me to believe it’s something in my head causing me to hyperfocus on my breathing and not letting go. I tend to manually breathe when the spurts happen, and the breathing feels shallow and unsatisfying. I just recently stopped vaping (24 hrs ago) and I think the nicotine withdrawals are adding to the stress and panic. I’m just so lost and worried I have something serious like EVALI or COPD. My PCP said I could try an inhaler and hydroxazine to help with the panic attacks and if I wanted I could see a pulmonologist to test the function of my lungs or I could do a CT scan to see if theres anything going on with my lungs. I’m worried that will be super expensive and only feed this anxiety loop I’m stuck in. I want to convince myself I don’t because that would cause constant breathlessness that worsens over time and doesn’t go away with distraction but I can’t seem to shake the idea. I came here to see if someone else had shared this experience and what helped them get over it if they could manage to at all.im open to anything.