Justmarried0620

Some questions to all you ear experts out there.

As a child I suffered from ear infections quite frequently and was had tubes put in twice to combat the problem.

Two years ago I came down with what my doctor diagnosed as an inner ear infection that plagued me for a month. I had severe vertigo that I thought would never go away and caused serious anxiety. I thought my doctor was just missing something and convinced myself I had some form of a brain tumor or something. I insisted on a CT scan, which came back clean and after a while the symptoms did in fact go away.

Since then I have had reoccuring bouts of the same symptoms a couple of times (they were not diagnosed by a doctor I just assumed this is what it was because of the same symptoms). All the times I have had this problem the symptoms seem to go away after a week or two.

A week in a half ago I flew home to visit my family. My ears really bothered me on the plane (which is typical for me). Two days later the vertigo symptoms were back and are still here. I have noticed this time that my ears feel full (like they need to pop) and are somewhat painful.

My questions are:

Can the pressure from change in altitudes while flying irritate your ear and in turn cause some kind of inner ear infection?

Is there any correlation between having chronic ear issues as a child and inner ear problems later in life?

When you've had an inner ear infection do you become more prone to them?

I have never seen an ENT about what I believe is reoccuring inner ear problems, but am starting to think that maybe I have narrow tubes that are causing me these continual problems, or something to that affect.

I would appreciate any info/advice anyone has on this subject.

Thanks