Coughing -- Beth

I thought I would start another thread since the last one was pretty old. Beth asked how old I was when I started with the coughing symptom. It started many years ago, when I was probably in my 30's (I'm 57 now). I mentioned it to a few doctors along the way, & it sort of got dismissed as allergies. I've never really had heart burn much except maybe after something like eating hotdogs and riding a tilt-a-whirl. I've had sort of a reflux of food taste in my mouth ocasionally, but nothing that I ever paid much attention to.
about 3 years ago, I started noticing that every once in awhile, my food didn't go down when I swallowed, but when I relaxed & waited a bit, it was O.K. Then after a couple of horrible episodes when I had to make myself regurgitate my food, because I couldn't swallow, I went to a gastro. I had to have my esophogus dialated & started Protonix. When I researched it a little more via internet, I found the description of coughing symptoms, and not being able to clear one's throat. It was a big Aha moment. I'm not so sure the Protonix is the right med for me, but the coughing has gotten a little better until lately.
It's really scary to me that I went more than 20 years & it took a damaged esophogus to get diagnosis and treatment.
Maggie