Could the cough come from my stomach?

I had a very stressful three months and have been eating more frozen food than usual due to lack of time. More burping and more bloating. Recently my stomach area right beneath the breast area has been bulging out and also my abdominal area  and I will burp out of the blue in front of people which I always could avoid. I now have a cold/flu with headache and some phlegm, but yesterday when I was on the phone with a client I started to cough and could not control it. I had to hang up and this went on for about 10 minutes with some 20 second breaks when I thought it was over just to start again. Tears were shooting out of my eyes and I thought I was going to cough/chocke to death. Afterwards, I was totally exhausted and drained and scared. After a night with not much coughing due to my cold/flu I had some phlegm loosening up this morning and thought I was getting better. At 11.30 am sitting at my computer I get another attack like the one yesterday. I grabbed a cough drop, but did not even have it all the way in my mouth when the attack stopped. So it could have not been the cough drop that stopped it. A friend told me she used to have anxiety attacks with a cough like that and I am an anxious person, but have never ever had a problem like this. While "googling" I came across some GERD and Dyspepsia information and was wondering if these cough attacks that do not stop for minutes could be stomach related i.e. GERD, Dyspepsia? I am now afraid to g somewhere not knowing when this is happening again....