The Fake Chinese Song That Became a Chronic Illness Poem

The rope toy was wet. Not damp, not slightly slobbered on, wet. Every time one of the dogs yanked it sideways, it made this soft, unpleasant little squelch against my hand, like the toy had given up on dignity. Their paws kept skittering across the floor. Their breathing came in excited little bursts. One dog had one end in his mouth, the other dog had the opposite end and the fierce moral certainty of a tiny pirate. I had the middle. So naturally, I started singing. Not in English, not in a language I actually speak, just my little made-up version of Chinese, which sounds questionable when I say it out loud, and somehow does not become less questionable after I explain it. Welcome to A Body Rebels, a chronic illness podcast. I'm Tate. This episode is about a nonsense song I sang to my dogs, the unexpected poem that came back from it, and the way chronic illness can make even a playful moment feel strangely connected to identity, memory, and the body. Here's my quick medical sanity check before I wander too far into puppies, ancestry, and accidental poetry. This podcast is based on my personal experience, not medical advice. Please don't use anything I say here to diagnose, treat, adjust medication, change oxygen, change diet, change treatment, or make any health decision. For that, talk to your own doctor or qualified medical professional, preferably someone who has not been emotionally bullied by two puppies and a tug toy. And yes, I choose to have an AI voice narrate these episodes because my own voice gets tired easily. The writing, memories, feelings, perspective, and lived experience are mine. The voice helps with accessibility, consistency, and listenability, especially on days when my vocal cords sound like an old porch door arguing with the weather. That brings me to a small ritual that had quietly shaped itself in our house, mostly unnoticed until my wife pointed it out. I don't speak Chinese. I don't know Chinese. I don't know phrases in Chinese. I don't know grammar in Chinese, and I cannot enter a conversation in Chinese and do anything useful except smile politely and hope no one asks me where the bathroom is. But when I'm playing with my dogs, I sometimes sing to them in sounds my brain has filed under Chinese. Not real Chinese. Not even close enough to be fake fluency. Just sound, rhythm, little rises and falls. A melody that seems to arrive before I think about it. I'll be tugging on a toy, scratching a puppy behind the ears, or watching one of them hop sideways because apparently joy requires choreography, and suddenly I'm singing this little song. The same sounds. The same rhythm. Again and again. My wife has noticed it for years. She'll hear me singing to the dogs and say, You know, you always say the same thing. Which is not the kind of feedback you expect during a private living room concert for animals who mostly care about treats, socks, and who currently controls the wet rope. But she was right. It wasn't random each time. It had a pattern. I'd sing the same string of sounds with the same shape, as if I were remembering a song I'd never learned. My great-grandfather was Chinese. That's part of my family history. And in my wondering, because my mind enjoys taking a simple moment and opening 15 drawers around it, I've thought about memory that sits deeper than ordinary memory. Not in a medical textbook way. I'm not announcing that my cells are secretly bilingual and waiting for the correct chew toy to unlock a family archive. But I've heard people talk about ancestral memory, DNA memory, past life memory, body memory, inherited echoes, cultural traces, all those possibilities that sit somewhere between science, folklore, imagination, and late-night internet wandering. I'm not trying to prove any of it. Whether it's inherited pattern, cultural osmosis, pure imagination, or my brain making beautiful nonsense while the dogs commit rope crimes, the emotional pull is what caught my attention. Because when I repeatedly sing the same made-up song in a language I don't speak and my wife tells me I keep saying the same sounds, I start wondering what little attic door in the brain has creaked open. I've done this in French sounds too. Not real French. My French is mostly dramatic vowels and confidence that would be escorted away from Paris before lunch. Once I sang my fake French into AI to see if it could make anything of it, and the answer was essentially nonsense. Fair enough, I had delivered nonsense. The machine returned nonsense. That transaction was honest. So when I decided to try the same experiment with my fake Chinese dog song, I expected the same result. I expected the AI to say politely, sir, please step away from the microphone. Instead, I held my phone near my mouth while the dogs were still pulling on the tug toy, their little bodies braced low, their playful growls coming in short bursts, like they had legal ownership documents for each end. I sang the sounds the way I always sing them. Then I waited. And what came back was this. The setting sun's glow, the heart's waves rise and fall. In the vast misty waters, who am I? Leaning on the tall tower, facing the horse head fiddle, I call out softly, returning to my dreams. I sat there. The dogs did not care. The dogs were still committed to rope-based diplomacy. But I stared at the words because that was not what I expected. I expected gibberish. I expected a translation that sounded like a soup menu written during a power outage. I expected the AI to throw up its tiny digital hands and say, No idea. Instead, I got a poem. And not just any poem. A beautiful one. The setting sun's glow. The heart's waves rising and falling. The vast, misty waters. Who am I? Calling softly. Returning to dreams. I'm not claiming it was truly Chinese. I'm not claiming I accidentally uncovered a lost family lyric. I'm not claiming that somewhere in my ancestry someone was leaning from a tower with a horsehead fiddle, waiting for a great grandson to sing at dogs while holding a moist rope toy. Although, if that's the case, I do apologize to my ancestors for the dog slobber. But the poem startled me because it sounded like a place I recognized emotionally. Twenty years into living with sarcoidosis, I've had plenty of moments where I've asked some version of, who am I now? Not always out loud. Sometimes it happens while I'm standing in a room, trying to remember whether I came in there for water, medication, my phone, or a reason to keep standing. Sometimes it happens after a medical appointment, when my body has been translated into numbers, scans, warnings, prescriptions, and phrases that feel far too small for the life they're trying to explain. Sometimes it happens when I do one ordinary thing, feel almost normal for a little while, and then my energy drops so fast it feels like someone pulled a plug behind my ribs. And sometimes it happens while I'm playing with the dogs, singing nonsense because nonsense is allowed to be light. The poem didn't feel like an answer. It felt like a mirror tilted just enough to show me something I hadn't been looking at directly. The heart's waves rise and fall. That line could be emotional, but in my life, it also has a very literal edge. I've lived with heart failure. I have an implanted AI C D. I know what it's like for the heart to be both symbol and machinery, both feeling and medical file. Some days heart language means love, fear, memory, tenderness. Other days it means rhythm, device checks, shortness of breath, medication, and the small private calculation of whether I need to sit down before my body makes the decision for me. So when I read the heart's waves rise and fall, it didn't feel decorative. It felt uncomfortably familiar. When I live with chronic illness long enough, ordinary words start carrying extra cargo. Tired doesn't always mean sleepy. Fine doesn't always mean fine. Rest doesn't always restore anything quickly. And a silly dog song can suddenly feel less silly when a machine hands me back a poem about mist, identity, calling, and dreams. I'm careful with meaning. That's important for my own sanity. Not every coincidence is a message. Sometimes a dog sneezes because dust went up its nose, not because the universe is issuing a prophecy. But I also don't want to flatten every mystery just because I can't explain it neatly. A moment can be funny and beautiful at the same time. I can believe the AI shaped my sounds into something poetic that may not have been accurate language at all. I can also believe my body, family history, imagination, memory, and tired little brain were all present in that room. Both can be enough for one afternoon. That's where chronic illness changes the texture of the story for me. Because in my experience, when my body has been unreliable for years, I become very aware of signals. I listen to breathing, I listen to fatigue, I listen to the tone of a doctor's voice when they read a result. I listen for the difference between normal pain and new pain, ordinary weakness, and the kind that deserves attention. I've become a reluctant specialist in my own body's background noise. So when I heard myself seeing the same sounds over and over, I listened differently. Not because I thought I was suddenly fluent in a language I don't know, because repetition has weight. A dog knows the sound of the food container. My body knows the sound of oxygen equipment. My wife knows the sound of me pretending I'm not more tired than I am. And apparently my dogs know the sound of me entering my fake Chinese folk singer era in the middle of playtime. That little song had become part of our house. Not important in a grand way. Just familiar. The dog's tug. I sing. My wife hears it. The afternoon keeps moving. And then one day, those sounds turned into words on a screen, and the words gave me pause. In the vast, misty waters, who am I? That line feels close to the fog of chronic illness. Not the movie kind where someone walks across a moor in a cape. I mean the fog where I lose my keys, forget why I opened an app, walk into a room, and stare at the wall like the wall has instructions. I mean the fog where identity gets blurry. At the beginning of illness, that question can feel loud. It can arrive with panic, appointments, fear, and a body that suddenly seems to have its own private agenda. After 20 years, the question changes shape. It isn't always loud anymore. Sometimes it's a quiet undercurrent beneath ordinary things. Am I still the person I was before illness took up so much of my schedule? Am I still the person who could move through a day without measuring oxygen, energy, medication, blood sugar, breath, appointment timing, and how far away the nearest chair might be? Am I still the person who used to trust my body to do basic things without turning them into negotiations? Some days that fog is heavy. It slows everything down. It makes simple tasks feel like they've been wrapped in wet wool. Other days something small cuts through it. A dog's paw on my leg. A ridiculous song. A phrase I didn't know I kept repeating. A poem appearing where I expected nonsense. I don't ask identity questions every day. I'm not sitting around in a dark robe whispering into the mist. I have dogs, I have a wife, I have chores, I have laundry that multiplies like it has funding. But those questions live quietly under the surface. Then a poem walks in carrying a horsehead fiddle, and suddenly I'm paying attention. Curious, I looked up the horsehead fiddle later. It's a real instrument connected with Mongolian music, and that cultural specificity made the poem feel even more surprising. It wasn't just mist and dreams, it had an object in it, a sound, a place I could almost picture, even though I didn't understand how it had arrived from my little dog song. Again, I don't know what the AI heard. It may have shaped my sounds into something plausible. It may have invented a poetic translation because AI is very good at answering with confidence, even when the input is wearing a fake mustache and pretending to be language. But I didn't need the result to be historically accurate for it to move me. The beauty was in the accident. I sang something ridiculous while my dogs tried to steal a rope from each other, and what came back sounded like longing. I spent a lot of time trying to make sense of things that resist sense. Medical things. Body things, memory things. The way illness can shrink a day and expand a thought. The way an ordinary afternoon can suddenly connect to family history, language, aging, grief, play, and a poem I didn't know I was carrying. I'm not asking anyone to believe in DNA memory. I'm not asking anyone to download an app and start chanting at their pets in fake languages, although if you do, please know your pets may judge you with their whole face. I'm saying I want to listen to the odd little rituals I usually dismiss. The hum while folding towels. The phrase I say to a dog. The tune I make up while rinsing a cup. Chronic illness can make life feel heavily documented. Test results, medication lists, appointment notes, insurance letters, instructions, warnings, refill reminders. It can turn the body into paperwork with skin. So when playfulness slips through the cracks of paperwork and fatigue, I want to notice it. I want to notice the nonsense song. I want to notice the poem. I want to notice the dogs pulling at the rope as if the entire household depends on their victory. I want to notice that even in a life with fatigue, breathlessness, medication, and medical history, the mind can still wander into mystery for a minute. A strange little song can become a small lantern, not a cure, not an answer, just a glow. And some days, a glow is plenty. I'm Tate, and this has been A Body Rebels, a chronic illness podcast. Thank you for coming along on this strange little detour through puppies, memory, language, and one suspiciously poetic tug toy. If you want to stay connected, you can visit AbodyRebels.com. You can leave a review, send me a message, or leave a voicemail for the show. I love hearing from real listeners, but I'm not able to respond to solicitations, sales offers, guest pitches, or promotional outreach. My inbox has enough medical paperwork energy already without someone trying to sell me a miracle supplement, a branding package, or a guest who has clearly never listened to the show. If this episode made you think of your own strange little rituals, please follow the show, share it with someone who understands chronic illness life, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. New episodes drop every Tuesday and Friday. And if you're able, please consider supporting the Foundation for Sarkoidosis Research, also known as FSR. Their work helps move sarcoidosis research forward, and you can learn more or donate at stopstarcoidosis.org. I'll put the link in the show notes. Before I go, my gentle little pronunciation gremlin needs one moment. The word is sarcoidosis, not sarcoidosis. Think koi as in koi fish, which sounds peaceful and pond-like, unlike the disease itself, which has brought considerably less tranquility to my paperwork. After 20 years of living with it, this mispronunciation has become a small pet peeve, and I'm choosing to be charmingly unreasonable about it. Until next time, be well. Be gentle with yourself. Keep breathing, and remember, sarcoidosis is only rare until you're the one living with it.