I was just about to say the same thing. Broken plenty of bones, appendicitis, hospitalised with jellyfish stings in Australia when I was a kid…none of them compared to an ear infection I got during Covid lockdown. Because it was lockdown and almost impossible to see a doctor I didn’t go get antibiotics straight away, thinking it would clear up on its own…it did not.
It felt like a skewer was being pushed through my ear into my brain. First couple of days the doctor on the phone just said keep taking the antibiotics a double or treble up on paracetamol or ibuprofen if I had to, which did absolutely nothing. After that got my hands on some tramadol my parents had from one of them having and operation and that did the job until the antibiotics cleared it up.
For the past 5 years any sign of an earache and I’ve got the GP on speed dial, I’m not going through that again.