How do you know you’ve met a Corean vampire? He doesn’t have a Seoul.

That’s not exactly what the pediatrician said, but any augury would have told us just that. We tried to avoid having an IV in our little hero by having her drink tiny amounts every ten minutes.

This was torture for Ooseung-ee, and she still vomited twice.

“I guess we’ll have to go for the IV,” the pediatrician suggested as the voice of imminent fate. I knew this wasn’t going to be good. But like the gods on Mount Olympus, we could only watch as Ooseungee faced her mortal trials alone.

The Mighty Baby Ooseung was sleeping, when not one, not two, but three light-haired nurses in floral patterned vests entered, trailing a beeping IV pole behind them like a rattlesnake’s tail. The caducean chimera swooped down on my fatigued little heroine.

“I’ll be The Bear,” the larger nurse transformed into a monstrous baby-holding beast.

The Bear held her down, while The Technician isolated Ooseung-ee’s right arm. The Assistant provided supplies and help to the other two heads of the beast.

The Assistant reassured us as Ooseung-ee started wailing and struggling,

“Babies hate being held down more than the actual poking part. If you listen to their screams, the pitch stays the same even when we get the IV in.”

They tourniqueted Ooseung’s elbow and I could see the unnaturally blue veins in our baby’s hand. Amy remained as stoic as Pallas Athene, betrayed only by her moistened eyes and reddened face as she uttered soothing words of courage while keeping her tears locked in a helm of strength.

“She’s a strong one,” The Bear commented to me as our little girl surpassed The Trial of Strength again and again.

Someday, appah will show you how to break someone’s arm when they are on top of you like that, Ooseungee. I can hardly wait, I thought to myself like a gleeful god of war.

The Mighty Ooseung’s pitch went up two octaves when they got the IV in. At that point, she ignored the first two heads of this floral-vested hydra and looked up at The Technician’s face whilst her own blood twisted through tubing like a mercurial crimson serpent. Each time the nurse drew back on the syringe, Ooseungee wailed higher (this isn't usually the case with blood draws), her eyes wide and pleading, seemed to ask the second oldest question of mortal existence: “Why me?” (The first oldest question being, "why am I here?")

The sight froze me like one of Medusa’s suitors. Usually when babies cry, they shut their eyes and shut out the world with their tears. But dehydrated little Ooseung was out of tears, and her eyes were wide and focused on the blood-sucking Lamiai feeding on her arm.

Eventually the nurses got what they came for (I don’t envy their job) and flew back to their Stygian ER stations. Poor Ooseungee was left with a giant bandaged gauntlet to protect the IV in her little hand. She fell asleep on the stretcher exhausted. Never to trust another light-haired woman in a floral vest ever again.

Unfortunately it didn’t end there. Baby felt warm, and was re-awakened for a rectal thermometer check. She didn’t like that any better than the first time.

“101.5, I’d better tell he doctor,” the nurse said.

The pediatrician came back in and told us, “With nausea and a fever, we’re going to have to rule out a urinary tract infection.”

As a hospitalist, it’s kind of a joke (and a reality) that all sick elderly people have a urinary tract infection until proven otherwise. Like babies, old people often don’t have symptoms that point to what’s wrong. They just have symptoms to tell you something is wrong.

“We’re going to have to get a urine sample,” the young pediatrician sensed our dread. “We have to put a catheter in her."

And once again, like the eternally returning eagle that pecks out Prometheus’ liver, little Ooseung was awoken from her sleep to be tortured yet again.

Only this time, The Mighty Ooseung changed tactics and used her wits instead of her brawn. As they pinned her down and were about to snake the catheter-ror in her Netherworldly regions, she forced out a gush of urine as darkly golden as the Fleece that Jason and The Argonauts died for. The nurses weren’t expecting that, and unfortunately, didn’t get a single drop of urine as it soaked into the mat (and the nurse's sleeve) like blood into gladitorial earth.

I was glad to see that Ooseung’s kidneys were still working (as well as her bladder muscles). With the IV pumping fluids in her, it was only a matter of time before she was rehydrated, rejuvenated, and reborn like The Phoenix.

Ooseung calls out for "ummay" nine tens out of ten, but on the tenth time she will say "appah."

Meanwhile, she was shushed to sleep in her ummah’s arms, accidentally hitting herself in the head with her oversized Herculean gauze-wrapped arm.

By midnight, the trials of Ooseung had ended. The fire from her veins and water from her bladder (she had to be cathed later) remained free of impurity (and infection). Her final diagnosis would be what I had guessed in the first place – viral gastroenteritis with dehydration. Amy had to return to the ER the next morning to give her more intravenous fluids. And then the following morning after that to get her IV taken out.

When Ooseung-ee had her arm unwrapped and the IV taken out, she almost didn’t recognize it. She had gotten used to her hand being wrapped like her own personal warhammer. But when she came home again and saw her brother Sun Su running rampant in the house, The Mighty Baby Ooseung forgot the pain and struggle of her heroic trials. She clapped and laughed at her Loki-an older brother’s senseless mirth. She became a happy little baby sister again.

In a strange way, these events made me view Ooseungee in a whole new light. I was proud of her and amazed by her resilience. Her fight and her spirit and her strength bonded with me deeper than her "gagas" and "babas". She seems more intelligent, more purposeful, this week alone. She's even sporting a fashionable little hairstyle of her own now, I think.

Maybe I'm just noticing these things now because my little warrior girl was in jeopardy and I couldn't help her out. It was enough to open even the blind eye of Odin. Every father is blind to some things that mothers see all along.

The next day The Mighty Ooseung climbed the stairs all the way up to the second floor by herself for the first time. It would be the first of many more glorious trials and challenges to come.