Does lidocaine cause tightness in the chest and difficulty breathing?

Most of the time, when lidocaine is used just for local anesthesia, it causes little or no reactions for the patient.  Most of lidocaine's effects should wear off in about four hours, which is twice the half life of the medication.  Common reactions can be injection site pain and swelling.  This applies to when lidocaine is just used locally under the skin.  However, lidocaine is also used intravascularly in advanced life support protocols.  In this case, lidocaine could cause heart arrhythmias, difficulty breathing, low blood pressure, seizures etc.  Some people are also severely allergic to lidocaine which can lead to anaphylaxis or even death.  From what you said, it is possible that you are allergic, but not as likely since you have had it several times before with no problem.  It is more likely that some of the lidocaine was injected into a blood vessel like you said.  Even so, the effects would usually wear off after several hours.