Anxiety, asthma, and shortness of breath

Hi all, this is going to be a long one, but here goes.

I've always been somewhat of an anxious person. The second I have a weird symptom, I start googling and that never leads to anything productive. I'm definitely a bit of a hypochondriac. I'm 25 and have had asthma since I was a little kid, but it was never severe. I used to have an inhaler and would have to use it occasionally (<1 time/week), but I seemed to "grow out" of it as it was unnecessary in my college years for the most part. When I did get an attack, it was never severe or life-threatening.

So my story starts about 6 months ago last October. In the summer of last year, I was very active with running and hiking. I took a month off work to do some long-distance backpacking and logged over 400 miles of hiking and climbing mountains, and it felt great. When I got back home in September, I decided I wanted to go to grad school so I started preparing my applications while working my old job at the same time. It was a really stressful time for me as there were multiple standardized tests I had to take that required significant amounts of studying. I applying to some pretty prestigious programs and there was a lot of pressure for me to get into a good school.

Around October, I started to notice a bad shortness of breath when running. I was out on a short 3-mile run and about 10 minutes it, it started to feel like I just couldn't get enough air. I could breath deeply, but it just didn't feel like it was enough. I powered through the run with some pretty bad cramping and a little soreness in my chest. I went on a hike that month too and noticed that at the start, I felt pretty crappy and short of breath, but oddly once I got into my stride, everything felt fine.

But since October, this shortness of breath has been consistent with physical activity. Running, biking, hiking, not matter how little. Sometimes even going for a 15-minute walk might cause me to feel short of breath. I'm not wheezing or coughing, it just literally feels like I can't get enough air into my lungs. It usually doesn't happen when I'm not exerting myself, but sometimes my breathing will feel a little off even if I'm sitting at my desk. 

I got an inhaler from urgent care but in the past few months, I've been pretty sedentary. I work a desk job, then after work, I would be studying or working on applications, otherwise lounging in bed. I'm pretty certain I am not hyperventilating. When I get the shortness of breath, I don't feel as if I'm in a panic and more importantly, my heart rate is normal. 

One interesting thing was I went on a pretty big hike last month (March). I thought for sure that I'd feel like I was dying, especially since simple walks were causing me this problem. And 15 minutes in, I was starting to feel crappy. But I took two puffs of the inhaler and couldn't believe it - shortly after that, I was able to complete the hike to the summit feeling amazing, and felt that way for the way down too. It was seriously incredible. I haven't done much since then, but I tried two puffs before a bike ride and felt pretty good too. I tried using the inhaler before a long walk today and it didn't help much, but then again walks aren't as bad as running or biking for me. My breathing just felt "off" and I got some very mild cramping one might expect from running (lactic cramps).

So I thought this was a stress thing at first, but now I'm thinking it could potentially be something asthma related (or both?). Has anyone experience something like this? I'm going to schedule an appointment with my GP for next month, but my biggest fear is that this could be something way more serious...tumor in the chest comes to mind...

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