Palace, you don't say what the fluid behind your eardrum is. I had a similar problem but the fluid filling up my ear and draining down my eustachian tube was CSF. I didn't know I had this leak until 3 months after my initial AN surgery because the fluid was not coming out my nose, which I would have noticed sooner, but was draining down my eustachian tube.
To verify this the ENT surgeon poked a hole in my eardrum (after numbing it) and drew out fluid in a syringe. He knew right away what it was and said he would have to operate ASAP to stop the leak. He warned me that the needle puncture of my eardrum might let bacteria in and I was at risk for getting meningitis. He operated 2 days later, which was the soonest he could get my neurosurgeon's help to place a spinal fluid drain in my back.
I DID have meningitis by the time I got to the hospital. I threw up in the car all the way there. The operation obliterated my already deaf left ear. The ENT surgeon had told me it would be impossible to find exactly where the leak was coming from so he would have to do major surgery. He removed 2 of the bones - anvil and stirrup I think. He put bone wax, fat, muscle and some synthetic stuff in my ear and eustachian tube to block out the CSF and replaced my eardrum with a flap of skin. I was in the hospital for 5 days, 3 of which were spent draining spinal fluid every 6 hours. I had massive amounts of antibiotics for the meningitis. They even put a PIC line in my arm so I could continue intravenous antibiotics for several days after I got home.
This past summer, 9 months after my ear surgery, something started to drain out of my ear. I thought there's nothing there. How could anything come out? I wasn't really worried though because I knew it wasn't CSF fluid. I was more like drainage from an infection and it smelled terrible. I didn't go to the doctor about it for months. It didn't hurt, only itched sometimes. When I finally went to my local ENT doctor this month he suctioned the "stuff" out of my ear to culture for a bacterial or fungal infection. His office called me back later and told me I had a "perfuse" MRSA infection. I asked what "perfuse" meant and they said "a whole lot". They explained that MRSA is the kind of infection you hear about hospitals having such a hard time with. It is antiobiotic resistant and very hard to get rid of. MRSA stands for "methycillin resistant staphyloccocus aureus". So now I am putting an antibiotic cream called Bactroban in my ear twice a day.
What worries me is that this bacteria is closely related to the bacteria that causes the "flesh-eating disease" (necrotizing fasciitis). Usually this disease is caused by a Strep infection but Staphylococcus aureus has been know to cause it too. If I get that in my ear I'll probably be dead in a day.
Maybe this story will make you think that having a drain in your ear for awhile doesn't sound so bad.
Seriously though, I hope you don't have to have ANYTHING done!
