Your description suggests that you very likely have a physical respiratory disease and it could be asthma. If you did indeed have whooping cough that could have precipitated the asthma, as whooping cough can seriously inflame the bronchial tubes, sometimes for months after the acute infection. The night-time to early-morning worsening of asthma symptoms is common.
I gather, from the suggestion of panic attacks, that you may be troubled by some anxiety and that, in turn, could account for some of your responses to cough and shortness of breath that your doctors have suggested is panic.. Gasping for air can make a person pretty nervous.
I suspect that you may have a blockage to airflow on the basis of the whooping cough, acute bronchitis and asthma.
I suggest that you quit smoking immediately and ask that your doctor prescribe whatever meds are required to get you over this flare-up of asthma/bronchitis.
As for smoking cessation, there should be no question. Your airways have been battered by smoke for a long time and, with the current severe episode, you must quit smoking now if you are to have any hope of returning your lung function to normal.
Good luck
Thank you for the advice. I am awaiting the results of some tests I took at the doctors, although I suspect the results will come clean, as they have for the last 6 months. It still remains an unpleasant situation to live with.
I have recently starting experiencing coldness in extremities (hands and feet mostly) during the day at irregular intervalls, as well as noticing some throbbing, dull pain in the upper leftwards area of my chest. Sometimes it "echoes" under my left armpit, and I feel numbness and a general sense of..."displacement" in my left arm, as if it wasn`t where it`s supposed to be. Best I can describe it is a "malaise" type of feeling,more than actual pain in the arm. When I do have pain in it, it`s usually rapid, not particularly sharp, more like numbness. I thought at first it was my old wound acting up (when I was trainning for wrestling a few years ago I tore my pectoral muscles, and Isince then occasionnally feel a pulling sensation), but this is a different kind of pain, more like an "itch". I keep scratching my chest over my heart as if something was itching, then it spasms under my armpit and through my arm. Not particularly painfull, mostly just very unpleasant.
The last ECG I did as well as X-rays showed good lungs, so I`m not worried about cancer suddenly sprouting inside 3-4 months, but I am concerned as to wether or not this is a sign of something chronic developing.
Also, I have noticed when going to bed at night, an increasein involuntary body movement. Didn`t have anything like that before as I`m not a very nervous person, but I`m lying in bed at night and suddenly my leg or arm will jerk once, quickly, for no apparent reason. Happens maybe 1-2times a week. Might be nothing at all, but it`s new to me.
A quick update, I thought it might`ve been nightime heartburn, so I bought some shelf medicine to regulate acide that last 24 hours. Yet when I woke up this morning I was still out of breath, and the pain in my chest is still present. It feels a lot like heartburn, only it`s more intense, and sometimes I feel it goes right through right into my back in the morning. It gets better after 30 mins to an hour.