I came across this post on FB and had to chuckle. Someone put a lot of thought into space travel and possible alien abduction. Then I remembered Reid’s Koinobi series. One of the aliens got sick and needed a doctor. Everyone knew a human doctor would be useless, so they went to the nearest vet.

There were two vets in the practice. The younger was used to verified practices and the older thought on the fly.

One draft of the book had the as an old hippy, but I don’t remember if that made it into the final cut of the book, but here’s a clip.

Narete pounded on the table with one hand. Her other hand shook trying to hold the thermometer.
“Ok, let’s see.” Dr. Abernathy examined the thermometer without removing it. “44 centigrade”. He wrote on his clipboard.
“Is that bad?” asked Mike.
Dr. Abernathy’s brow furrowed. “How would I know? This is an alien. I have no idea what is normal for her kind.”
“Then why?”
Dr. Abernathy confirmed his suspicion. “To shut her up, of course.”
Mike wrote his address on Narete’s chart when a thermometer exploded against the wall near his head.

A lot of people have the same, or similar, ideas. What you do with those ideas make them your own. In this case, one person created a FB post and another person used it as part of a story. People have been doing this for centuries. Da Vinci came up with the concept of helicopters and tanks long before the technology to build them existed. Jules Verne wrote about nuclear power before it became a thing.

I’ve even been at a convention where someone picked up my Man on the Stair book and got upset because it was, as he called it, ‘The same story he wanted to write.’ Unfortunately, the guy didn’t stay around long enough for me to explain that he could still write his story because he would be his own twist on to it. My original inspiration came from an old Glenn Miller song which was based on an 1899 poem.

Just because someone has a similar idea doesn’t mean you need to give up on yours. I just mean you need to put your personal spin on things. A good example of this is The Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy which started as Twilight fan fiction. Until you start comparing the two novels, you don’t realize that they’re basically the same.