I have a hard to decipher cough as well. I was completely unaware I was even coughing until my spouse pointed it out after I was diagnosed in the ER with BE. I now notice I often cough once or twice when I first get out of bed, to me this seems like the BE (mucus pooling in lungs at night). I have an occasional dry cough that comes and goes, I can have a day where I have a few single dry coughs throughout the day then nothing for weeks, maybe months. This seems possibly seasonally related. My most frequent cough surrounds eating and drinking. I am generally noisy when I eat/drink. Coughing, throat clearing. I had a barium swallow test, full gerd workup, all negative. They now think my eating/drinking cough/throat clearing may be a neurogenic cough, which is the result of nerve damage involving the larynx. They can do nerve blocks, and/or drugs to try and temper the sensation. I confess I am not convinced and continue to worry I may have some sort of swallow dysfunction. I plan to review it all with NJH and get their thoughts on whether there are any other options for clarifying what is going on with the eating/drinking. My cough doesn’t bother me, again I was unaware of it before my spouse pointed it out, but I do worry about aspiration. The ENT who thought the cough during eating/drinking is neurogenic told me that he knows I am not aspirating because I do not have pneumonia, which I would have repeatedly if I was aspirating as frequently as I have the sensation of aspirating (he says the nerve dysfunction makes it feel like I am aspirating but I am not actually aspirating). I responding that a sign of aspiration could be my extensive BE with no history of lung infections. Dr said no, aspiration doesn’t cause BE. This of course is contrary to what all the BE experts say so not sure what to make of it. Again, will see what NJH thinks. My own opinion is that I have different types of coughs caused by different factors. It’s not one thing, and that’s what makes it tricky to assess. I do my A/C but it does not seem to have any impact on my cough, though 90% of my cough is unproductive so that does not seem surprising. I do worry at times that the saline may be increasing lung sensitivity.