My wife (at the time my girlfriend) also had severe equalization problems at the beginning of her diving career. One ear was substantially impossible to equalize with the Valsalva method.
She was visited by several ENTs and she was proposed for the Eustachean tube dilation.
I was of little help, as I am not facing any equalization problem: I learned BTV when I was a child, so I can open my tubes at will using the proper muscles.
The turnpoint, who avoided that invasive procedure to my wife, was discovering the Frenzel equalization method, which allowed her to equalize perfectly while free diving (with the mouth closed and without breathing).
After this, my girlfriend was finally admitted to the 6-months long Fipsas-CMAS diving course, during which the instructor did teach her the Marcante-Odaglia equalization method, which is a variant of Frenzel which was developed for divers employing the ARO closed-circuit rebreather.
At the time this was the Scuba system most widely employed here for training new divers.
The main difference between Frenzel and Marcante-Odaglia is that in Frenzel the mouth is closed and the diver is not breathing, so it is perfect for free divers. In Marcante-Odaglia the mouth is open, with a mouthpiece inside, and the diver can breath while equalizing.
In both cases the equalization is not obtained using lungs: you close the nose with your fingers and increase the pressure inside it by raising the soft palate.
So a proper equalization technique avoided to my girlfriend the need of Eustachian tube dilation.
She never had any problems after mastering the proper equalization method ..
So I suggest that, before such an invasive procedure, you try learning a proper eq technique, discarding the crap Valsalva method.
The problem is finding a course where the instructor is able to teach these advanced equalization methods.
Most scuba diving instructors do not know these methods.
A free diving instructor usually teaches Frenzel, and its "mouthfill" variant (Frenzel-Fattah), employed for deep free diving.
Marcante-Odaglia is substantially unknown outside Italy, as this method was mostly associated with the ARO rebreather.
Similarly, BTV is almost unknown outside France, where it was invented.
However DAN periodically organizes equalizing workshops: in them an ENT first visits the participants, them some theoretical explanation is taught, explainig four or five equalizing methods, and finally the participants go to a deep pool (usually Y42 here in Italy) where they can test tha various methods under supervision of an equalization trainer.
So I suggest that you contact DAN and see if they are organizing one of these workshops in your area.
