Hi Jacob,
Nice to meet you and thanks for the encouragement. I'll be sure to keep you all updated, even if/after i get out of this mess.
The length of your time with it, 4-5 years, seems like it really could be laryngeal sensory neuropathy/nerve related.
For one thing, it's not common for this to happen to guys, and in their 20s, but when it does it seems to begin with a bad cold.
A lot of people blame it on the ibuprofin and stuff, you can see in other posts, but really they were taking ibuprofin because why? Because they were sick. I think the virus/cold/flu is the real culprit of the whole problem.
For one thing, your barium swallow showed no reflux. I bet you don't really have reflux, and if you had surgery, it seems like every time, we 20 something guys wake up from it clearing our throats.
However, since it began with a cold which is a virus doing damage to tissue in your throat, it makes more sense that somehow the virus did damage to nerves in the area, and put them into a state.
In any case, you gave the first idea 4 or 5 years to work, and it didn't. So why not talk to your doctor about laryngeal sensory neuropathy, after doing a little investigating.
Especially for us 20 something guys (quite a few are from the UK) who got a cold, and then suddenly have chronic reflux (?), it seems like our medical neeRAB are being neglected.
There was some australian guy who had a disease where he is allergic to sunlight, but growing up, his doctors and family all thought he was some kind of hypochondriac or mental case. Now they know. It was physical.
Right now, we are the people probably suffering with some poorly or totally not understood medical condition. We have to really push to get to a cure, and the diet stuff is just adding stress, and giving doctors an excuse to send patients like us away without solving our problem. I'm at the point where I would happily volunteer for nerve surgery experiments just to try to find a real cure to this, instead of a no carbs diet, and other medieval superstition sounding garbage. I find eating what I want took a lot of the irritation of having this disease away.
P.S. I don't have to wear a tie, but my coat pressing on my throat bothers me, so I can relate.