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.
Wax blockage is one of the most common causes of hearing loss. This is often caused by attempts to clean the ear with cotton swabs. Most cleaning attempts merely push the wax deeper into the ear canal, causing a blockage. The outer ear is the funnel-like part of the ear that can be seen on the side of the head, plus the ear canal (the hole which leads down to the eardrum).