Hey OC community! This forum has been invaluable for me as I have struggled over the last few months with some health anxiety. First let me say, I am not looking for a diagnosis. I trust in my doctors, but I am curious to hear some of. your thoughts....

I will start from the beginning.

I am 41 years old, male.

In the beginning of June 2024 (I would say the first week) I started getting some slight neck pain in the back of my neck. It typically wouldn't last long after waking up, but I did notice that sometimes throughout the day as I was walking I would feel this slight neck pain. It wasn't too awful, and I would consider it a 4 of 10. I didn't think much of it because I had recently resurfaced my pool by myself, and that was a very intensive task that I thought could have caused it. Fast forward about two weeks later, I am still getting this pain. So while in the car, I was feeling the back of my neck (trying to massage out the pain) and I noticed what felt like to me a lump next to my spine on my neck. I immediately when to Urgent Care, because I thought the worst. The nurse looked at my neck and felt it, and said "Doesn't feel good, I want to get an ultrasound done" so she ordered an ultrasound on the back of my neck. It showed nothing but slight swelling from unknown cause. Being a little anxious about my health, I couldn't take that at face value, so I had another ultrasound done about two weeks later which showed the same result (no mass).

From that point I still had the neck pain and now I was developing ear pain BUT ONLY WHEN I SWALLOW. So I decided that it was time for me to establish a primary care doctor as I have not had any doctor in the last 5 years or so...maybe even a bit longer. My primary care doctor did a really good exam on me (Checked my weight, my blood pressure, felt my lymph nodes, looked in my ears) and said that everything looked normal, but she wanted to get some blood work done since it had been a long time since the last labs I had. She also referred me to an ENT because she wanted to calm my nerves down.

I did my bloodwork and the labs came back as being pre diabetic, and a tad high cholesterol. No fun having to prick myself in the morning to test my fasting glucose, but it is what it is. All my bloodwork otherwise was in really good shape. So I headed to the ENT to discuss my concern of possible head and neck cancer. The ENT did a really good exam on me as well, and did a flexible laryngoscopy and told me that my throat looks really good, and he didn't see anything that would even slightly indicate throat cancer. They also did an exam on my mouth, looked under my tongue, etc. They said that I have tonsil hypertrophy, 3+ bilateral (not really sure what that means).

Fast forward to today (which is 3 weeks after my first ENT visit) my ear pain is there some days, but not others. It subsided for 5-6 days and then one day it would come back and the other day it would be gone....Again, this ear pain is ONLY when I swallow. it doesn't hurt unless I swallow. I have an appointment with my Primary Care Doctor next week to get a referral for a CT scan, but my anxiety is on full display. Does this type of ear pain sound like anything related to head and neck cancer?