It's still interesting work...

One of my jobs is to interview new patients. I cannot explain why but it seems that when I have two or more in the same day, their stories or problems are strikingly similar. Sometimes I will have back to back alcoholics whose families have threatened never to see them again if they don't get sober. Or women with "emotional dysregulation" who have been cutting themselves to relieve stress. Or overdoses or insulin dependent diabetics or paranoid schizophrenics. Today the special was OCD. One was obsessive enough to need hospitalization and the next was grossly impaired by compulsions calling it "my brain sickness." Sometimes I think the more I know, the less I know. Why are there similarities on the same day? Why this crazy thinking? Sometimes I think I have an individual figured out and want to say...aha! I have the solution! But propriety says I can't say. And would they listen or believe? And how would their lives then change? what would they lose? On other times, I am clueless, but never am I bored. We humans are an interesting lot, and especially these outliers that I see on a regular basis.