Skin is the soft outer tissue covering vertebrates. Other animal coverings, such as the arthropod exoskeleton have different developmental origin, structure and chemical composition. The adjective cutaneous means of the skin (from Latin cutis, skin).
Sorry to hear about your problem. The numbness in the ear can be due to variety of reasons. Some of them are. Diabetes. Peripheral neuropathy. Sensory nerve trauma. Ear infection. Cold. Cerebro vascular accident. Ear injury etc. As there is no history of trauma, so ear injury and sensory nerve trauma can be ruled out. Diabetes can be detected by undergoing a blood glucose test. This numbness can be caused by a preceding throat infection which can result in ear infection leading to numbness.
The most common cause of numbness or tingling is a problem with a peripheral nerve- the neural connections between the spinal cord and the rest of the body. Knowing which nerve supplies different areas of the body can help a neurologist figure out where the problem is, and how it might be fixed.