Shelby

I had similar terrible earaches for a year, constantly misdiagnosed, before a CT scan showed cancer. The good news is that the surgery should take care of that earache since it is often caused by the tumor growing and pressing on a nerve. The nerve interprets that as an earache.
At 19, you have been bombarded with advertisements and warnings about pain pills during your formative years (unlike mine- when it was better living thru chemistry), but it's really different for cancer patients. Please don't wait until 10 level, you should be starting at 5 or 6 level. When the pain pills are for real physical pain from cancer, it's not the same as the "pain of living" that abusers and addicts try to treat. You will not see tragic stories here at OCF of people becoming addicts, because we all want to get off them as soon as we can, BUT you need to start getting effective pain control asap to help you in your battle.
EAT UP A STORM IF YOU CAN THIS CHRISTMAS, before the surgery,
Everything and anything, don't worry about calories etc, you will lose weight during TX. When you go in after Christmas for your surgery, in the ICU, take every morphine shot they offer. The less pain you feel, the faster you will recover.
Once I was diagnosed and they found out the cancer was causing the earache, they immediately prescribed percocet every 4 hours.
Be sure to mention to the surgeon that you have been having earaches but as far as I know, earpain is a very common side effect of this cancer. As noted in some posts, the medical term is "referred pain", which in plain english means it's not really your ear at all, but the tumor.
So sorry to see someone so young posting here.
Charm