when symptoms of illness provoke anixiety

Hi, thanks for this supportive forum. I've found lots of helpful info.
I had my first panic attacks 20 years ago in graduate school--at that time no one knew what they were and I ran the gamut of all the medical tests, etc. I eventually found someone who knew what they were , was on medication for awhile, got off of it, and had only intermittent attacks for years ( and at that time I could control them just by thinking " This is just a panic attack. It isn't real")
Then when my youngest child ( I have four) was two I started having them again with very different symptoms so it took awhile to realize what they were. I was on Paxil ( the worst week of my like while getting it started--lots of panic and NO sleep) but it made me feel like a zombie. Got off the Paxil two years ago--dealt with depression for about a year, then was feeling fairly normal when...
I got this pain in my throat. It was very definite and localized but it made me feel like I was choking. It seemed like this reactivated the panic, having the symptom of a panic attack orginating from something else. It also activated a lot of anxiety ( What is this? What if it chokes me? Is it cancer growing down there that's going to choke me eventually? You get the idea.) It took two months to finally get a diagnosis ( the specialist thinks I've got arthiritis in my voice box!) and get on good medicine. Meanwhile I had endured a lot of pain, which added to the anixiety and now the panic seems to have taken on a life of its own and I'm back to panic attacks, at least several times a week.
So my question is, How do you deal with anxiety provoking symptoms that appear to be symptoms of a real illness? Like my throat problem---there was actually a problem there but I didn't know what it was, it was very painful, and it was mimicking a panic symptoms. How do you keep anxiety from actual, real physical problems from becoming overwhelming?
And, as a side note, how do you get a physician to listen to your concerns? I think I had five physician visits before I got someone to listen to me that this symptom was not being caused by panic but engendering panic. It gets to where I don't want to tell a physician that I have panic attacks because then whatever follows they attribute to the panic disorder---"Oh, Pain in your throat? .....classic panic symptom that must be what it is!"