Swollen lymph nodes and ear pain?

[curadhan74]

First of all, I have been having sharp pains in my left ear for the past few days, and haven't found any syptom lists online that have my specific syptoms, so I'm kind of dumbfounded. In addition to these sharp ear pains every few minutes, the lymph nodes in both sides of my neck behind and below my ears (1 on left right behind my ear almost touching it, 1 on left mid to bottom of neck above collar bone, and one on right straight behind ear, almost on the back of my neck), are very swollen and painful to touch; the one on bottom left to the point where it's making my neck sore from moving my head around so much at work, and all 3 seem to be swelling or dropping on a daily basis like they can't make up their mind what they're doing. It's really confusing me actually. Lol. I'm pretty sure that I don't have an inner ear infection or ruptured ear drum, seeing as to how I'm not dizzy or having any hearing problems or discharges. I've read that it may be something to do with my jaw popping when I chew, but it has always done that since I was younger and I've never had any problems. I cleaned out my ears with a Q-Tip last night as usual, but I didn't stick it too far in or anything. And I don't grind my teeth while sleeping or anything, so that isn't a possible culprit either. I've also read that ear pains can be caused by cold temperatures, so I'm thinking that's what it may be. I live in Phoenix AZ, and I recently (3 1/2 weeks ago) started working in the dairy product and frozen food deep freezers full time at the Wal Mart I work at. So everyday when I come to work, it's 100+ degrees outside, then I walk right into a freezer that is constantly kept a little below zero degrees fahrenheit (dairy is around 35 degrees, both are required by state law for food safety), where I'm constantly in and out of them 8 hours a day stocking shelves in an 80 degree building (give or take a few degrees on that one), then back out into the desert heat after work. I wear a jacket with the hood up while I'm in there, but I still can't stay in the deep freezer for more than 10 minutes at a time or it starts to hurt to breathe (where as the dairy cooler I could probably sit in all day because it doesn't hurt and it feels great compared to the rest of the store or outside! Lol). I just want to get it figured out cuz I'm tired of my neck pain already, and I have big guaged earrings (7/8", they're completely healed and cleaned almost every day, so there's no chance they're infected or what's causing this), so you can see the swollen lymph nodes through the plug and it's annoying me. Haha. I've never had these problems before, so would these rapid extreme temperature changes on a daily basis be causing this?

[muata2]

No, changes in temperature do not cause ear pain or swollen lymph nodes. Most likely you have an infection of some sort.