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Continue reading →: Medlife Crisis: Reflections from the Edge
I took a different route to work today. Drove past my old med school and saw myself again—walking those streets, hopeful and wide-eyed, thick glasses slipping down my nose, white uniform stained with blood and sweat, lugging around books and transcriptions I barely finished reading the night before. I…
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Continue reading →: Quarter Past Tito
It’s just 9:15 p.m., but my mouth keeps betraying me with yawns so wide they could swallow my coffee mug. I drained the last drops from the coffeemaker, hoping caffeine might sharpen my brain enough to absorb CNN’s latest update on the North Korean-American conflict. No luck. These days,…
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Continue reading →: Table for One, Plus Everyone I Work With: An Introvert’s Horror Story
It’s been a while, and yes, life has happened—loudly, unexpectedly, and all at once. I’ve finished residency training and now serve as chief of our department. If you’re into Grey’s Anatomy, think Miranda Bailey, but quieter, less dramatic, and with fewer monologues. I’m also wrapping up the final exams for…
ETHER DIARIES
controlled breaths | uncontrolled thoughts
Hello,
I’m Macoy Cruz
I’m an obstetric anesthesiologist by training, and honestly, a satirist because it’s the only way to stay sane. Most days I’m tucked behind the drapes, dealing with misbehaving vitals, badly timed alarms, and patients who may or may not be fully committed to consciousness.
I was clinically diagnosed with depression in 2018, and it has been relapsing ever since. I look fine most of the time. I function. I teach. I work. Then the heaviness shows up again, stays for a while, and eventually lets go. It comes and goes in cycles, and I have learned to move with it even when it feels like it is pulling me under.
This blog has become part of how I cope. Writing helps me steady myself when the quiet depression returns. It gives me a place to breathe and make sense of the days when I feel like I am slipping beneath the surface.
So this space is my cool down zone. Part storytime, part rant, part emotional first aid kit. Expect thoughts on medicine, life, and the strange challenge of staying awake in a system that seems built to knock everyone out, figuratively and literally.
Ether Diaries 