I was already angered by a fake pharmacist. Cortisone is an anti-inflammatory you will find as an ingredient in almost every prescribed ear cream. The otc versions are 1% solutions, less than a 20th of what is found in prescribed ear creams. As with any medication, prescribed or otc, one must experiment for negative undesired effects. You use a little, no problems, then you continue the therapy. The word steroid has become an anathema for the panic ridden, yet steroids are regularly used in medicinal therapies successfully employed to help millions. Today, there are growing questions about the use of NSAID therapies, including aspirin. If aspirin were a recent development, not a long term accepted otc therapy, likely it would be a prescribed medication and as tightly controlled as morphine.
There are more than enough good reasons to ignore medical critics on message boards. You said "Don't stick anything in your ear." How do you think those prescribed creams are applied to the ear canal? What mechanism is used? Could it be a Q tip? Who is giving bad advice? I suggest you examine your own words.
Everything ever posted or that will be posted on an internet message board, in relation to any topic, is from a personal perspective. Including medical advice. Certainly a physician should be the first choice for medical advice, but what do you do when physicians fail you, or as is common with this particular malady, give up?