Need a little advice

So I'm a 21 year old male who is looking for some advice about what you would do in my situation. Should probably give a little background first (sorry if this is a long post):

about three months ago my mom was rushed to the hospital because she thought she was having a heart attack. Turns out she wasn't but while they were performing a CT scan of her heart they clipped the top part of her kidneys where they found a mass on one of them. They referred her to a specialist where they suggested surgery to biopsy the mass. She recently had it removed and it turns out it wasn't cancer (thank God). However, this is where my story begins. Since I heard about her being rushed to the hospital I began having random palpitations and skipped beats, slight dizziness, panic attacks, and recently I feel like I might be having some shortness of breathe. The shortness of breathe feels more like my throat tightening than as if I'm out of breath so I'm not really sure what to think of it. I went to the doctor after a night where the palpitations kept me awake and I was having chest pain. She performed two EKGs. They were both normal but during the first one my pulse was at 115 bpm because I was having a panic attack. She decided to wait for me to calm down and performed the second EKG, where my pulse dropped to 84 bpm. She said she was pretty sure all my symptoms were just from anxiety, but she referred me to a cardiologist to get an echo done.

So I get the echo done two weeks later and then have to wait another two weeks to discuss the results with a doctor. During this time all my symptoms persist, but so has my stress level due to school and various other events. I meet with the cardiologist and he basically asks me why I'm there to see him. He checks my echo and says it's perfectly normal, looks at the two EKGs I had done, takes my blood pressure and pulse. He tells me he definitely thinks it's just stress but if I really feel it's necessary to call and he'll perform a stress test.

So after hearing this I felt almost perfectly fine for the next couple days, until my stress level began to increase again. Now the symptoms are back and I'm not sure what to do. The doctor said I'm fine but I can't help but feel like this can't just be happening because of stress. If you were in my situation would you return to the doctor and ask to have more tests done? I feel like I've put my parents through enough and don't want to waste more of their money, especially after how confident the cardiologist seemed.

Edit: I should probably add that I'm 5'11, 170 pounds. I haven't been exercising much lately but I'm still in decent shape, slim build. Last time I had my blood pressure taken it was 130/80 and I'm not really too sure about the history of heart disease in my family.

Post Edited (Ong) : 6/18/2010 8:11:19 PM (GMT-6)

Thank you for the quick response. The doctor offered me anti-anxiety drugs but I basically denied them because I really do not want to depend on anti-depressants at such a young age. I started running again so once I get past worrying if it's going to cause more problems we'll see if it helps. I guess my biggest concern is if two EKGs and and echo, along with my given background, is enough for the doctor to assume it's just stress.

Thank you for the response. The doctor I saw did not want to give me anything like Xanax or Valium until after I tried Zoloft. Even after that she said she would be very hesitant to give me something like Xanax because of how addictive it can become. So I turned down the Zoloft and decided I would try to find a more natural way to deal with the panic attacks.