AI Ally

Hangs up. Phone drops. Thud.
She blinks back, tears, and looks up.
Thyroid cancer, huh …
Typing, click clack … thud.

She sighs in relief.
Texts friends, invites family
over for comfort.

The next day, she calls
her doctor ready to talk,
ready to listen.

Behind the poem: not your typical haiku

“AI Ally” originally was written for medmic’s Fall / Winter 2024 Haiku Contest. While it was not selected as a winner (but another one of the poems did!), it influenced me to write with the restraints of the haiku convention.

Interestingly, being forced to work within a tradition (in this case, haiku’s syllabic meter) inadvertently inspired me to be innovative with my writing. Learning the rules helped me effectively break them, electing to use multiple stanzas and multimedia to tell the story of an anxious woman newly diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

But while not a traditional haiku, it’s not quite a new style either: Learning about senryū

This past week, while reflecting on this poem to publish on Medium, I actually learned of the poetic form senryū (haiku’s “comic cousin“). I suppose it would be more accurate than to call my series of stanzas senryū-inspired.

While both haiku and senryū follow the 5–7–5 syllabic meter, haiku focuses on nature and seasonal imagery, and senryū writes about the human condition — often humorously, ironically, or satirically.

I was amazed and thrilled to find that my poem, while not a haiku, seemed to fit senryū. Without even knowing about the specific art form, I wrote an optimistic tale about the human themes of uncertainty and the feeling of isolation that accompanies illness.

I somehow even captured the element of senryū satire through my silly, playful take on how Google and ChatGPT could actually be good for patients rather than the more relevant villainization of the digital landscape.

I guess sometimes the elegance of innovation comes from something that feels new, but when you truly dig down to the roots, it really isn’t that new at all. Just a new version or a new way of doing it.

Beyond being unconventional in its use of multiple “haikus” as stanzas, my vision to portray how creative use of technology can positively influence people manifested through my use of multimedia.

By including screenshots of relatable internet activity (Google more so than ChatGPT, though maybe so in the not-so-distant future), the reader is placed firsthand in our protagonist’s point of view.

While the poem is mostly written in the third-person perspective to tell the specific story of a woman newly diagnosed with thyroid cancer, the screenshots and momentary switch to first-person narration (“Should I be scared? Please tell me.”) aim to evoke empathy and intimacy.

Honestly, it was quite fun that when the first image is read as “Google: What is a thyroid?” it works as a line with the right amount of syllables for that stanza’s required syllabic meter.

An attempt at narrative medicine

Although “AI Ally” centers on a fictional woman in a modern, post-ChatGPT era, it is loosely based on the true story of my dad, who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer back in 2013.

I am also a medical student who has had the privilege of witnessing many people being given diagnoses that challenge philosophies and shake their sense of self.

While decidedly unserious and overly optimistic in its support of “Dr. Chat” or “Dr. Google,” it still tells a human story grounded in a human truth: that life can hit us with unexpected, life-changing news, and it can leave us feeling scared and alone.

Sometimes, it is easier to turn to a faceless, “all-knowing” entity than to face our own family and friends.

And what if by turning to information havens like the internet, we can then build the courage to lean on our actual flesh-and-blood loved ones and community experts?

Technology and the internet can definitely strip us of our humanity.

It can certainly divide and isolate us as people.

However, it, too, can serve to build connection and understanding if we can see it that way.

I (the author) originally took the screenshots, and I captured the specific image from ChatGPT 3.5 by asking it, “Please write a haiku to comfort a patient who just discovered she has thyroid cancer.”

Isabelle Tran is a medical student.