Please tell me I'm normal

Yesterday should have been mental health day. I saw probably 5 or 6 different patients with 5 or 6 different types of psychological problems. Pretty varied, and pretty interesting.
I'm starting to feel really bad, though. I have a friend with severe ADHD, and when he'd told me about it, I hadn't exactly laughed, but I hadn't really believed him and I'd thought, yeah right, everyone can claim they have it and use it as an excuse for all sorts of bad behavior.
But actually I was totally wrong. Apparently ADHD is one of the most understood psychological conditions. It's true that it can be used as a label to slap on a kid who is 'behaviorally challenged' (i.e. naughty), but if one looks at the countless scientific studies showing decreased brain activity in particular areas, metabolic imbalances, documented symptoms, it emerges as a condition that not only actually exists, but is very treatable. That's the good news.
The bad news is that learning about mental illness is pretty much convincing me that I am mentally ill. Yesterday I was reading through my list of different conditions. Dreams/flashbacks and hyper-arousal? Yep, that's me- I have PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder). Increased activity, goal-directed/high-risk, decreased judgement, irritability, elevated mood and speedy talking? Apparently I am a classic Manic. Low energy, trouble concentrating and weight changes? Um, I have clinical depression. Or maybe my symptoms fit better with phobias, body dysmorphic disorder, OCD, psychosis or panic attacks.
As I was reading through the lists I had to keep saying to myself, Heather, you're normal. Heather, you're normal. Heather, you're normal. And apparently it's normal for students studying about these conditions to be convinced they have them all.
At least until I met my patient Susan this week. (*Name changed of course).
She was heading down the hallway of the hospital and I stopped her to say hi.
"Hi Susan, how are you?"
"Oh, I'm fine!" Big smile
"Where are you going?" I asked nicely.
"Oh, I'm just going upstairs to my room."
"That's nice." I said, thinking, her room isn't upstairs, it's right behind her.
"Yes, my room is inside the refrigerator. I'm going there right now."
"Oh, that's nice." I said again, thinking, what do you say to someone who thinks they're living in a refrigerator?
She walked past me, humming good-naturedly and pushed the button on the elevator. Later that day when I wrote on her chart I wrote "patient disoriented."
Heather, you're normal.
And then yesterday I met Gloria. Gloria is a ten-year-old girl who started having severe abdominal pain and persistent anxiety. A lot of it centered around school, and there was investigation to see if she was being bullied. She saw child psychologists who ruled out any abuse, and while a precise cause was not found for her abdominal pain and anxiety, the addition of some appropriate anti-anxiety medication and lots of loving support from her parents had gone a long way. She had come in to see the doctor for a check-up and looked at me out of the corner of her eye from under long bangs that hid most of her face. The stress of her mental illness had caused her immune system to be depleted and she had broken out in warts all over her body and extremities. We discussed what to do about the warts and how she was finding school.
Heather, you're normal, I told myself.
Later in the afternoon I was suddenly surprised to hear my name being called from the waiting room. I turned to see my good friends Penny and Patrick (* names unchanged) sitting there. We hugged and chatted and when I was sitting in the examining room with them I suddenly thought, aren't they normal people just like me? What are they doing here for?
Actually they had a pretty normal problem (no detail here, cause they ARE my friends), but as I said goodbye to them I thought, isn't it true that the only normal people are the ones I don't know? they could just as easily have been coming in to see the doctor about their borderline personality or schizophrenic disorders. The funny thing is, mental illness is not some rare and strange phenomenon that only people you don't know have. It touches most of us. In a sense we're all normal, and while there are, for sure, some pretty crazy people out there, a lot of it is just our diversity. We may all be genetically human but we're all so different in the way we respond to things.
But I still think I might have a mania. After all, how else can I explain my speedy talking?