Ouch!! What did you have to do after the eardrum ruptured? That sounds extremely painful.
If it helps you feel better, when I get sick now as an adult, I swear, everything is worse and feels worse than it did when I was younger. I used to never get strep throat. Ever. Within the last two years, I've had it maybe 4 times, and it literally feels like someone's dragging a serrated knife down my throat. So far any ear infections I've gotten have been in an ear that also has an ear tube, so the pain isn't there, just the drainage.
But if anyone has any ideas as to why colds and such hurt more as we age, I'd love to hear them! I can take A LOT of pain, and sometimes, I can barely stand it.
Oh, and I wanted to second someone's comment about not dinking around with an ear infection. Or a bad sinus infection, for that matter. I had one sinus infection after another when I was in my mid-twenties. Everytime I'd think it's time to see the doctor, the sinus infections would go away. Or so I thought. Apparently, one of the colds decided to sit inside my middle ear/Eustachion tube in my right ear. I didn't know it; couldn't feel it. Well, that infection slowly destroyed my Eustachion Tube, to the point where at the age of 41 years I now have a permanent T-tube in my ear. I just saw my adult ENT specialist, who asked me when I got the T-tube (I got it in another state before I mmoved). When I told him 1995, he said in all likelihood that it would be in there permanently, because if it wasn't needed, it would have fallen out by now. And it's a pain to take care of. I have to regularly put hydrogen peroxide in the ear to help clean the ear wax around the tube. If I take my daughter swimming and I want to swim, or teach her how to swim underwater, I have to make sure my ear is plugged with wax. And that doesn't guarantee that I still won't get swimmer's ear or an infection.
So take good care of your ears! :)