in Search

Do you Twitter? Follow us @CodeBetter

Raymond Lewallen

Professional Learner

A New Developer in the Lewallen Family!

Here is the latest addition to the Lewallen family – my son Raymond “Drew” Lewallen.

He was born 7 lbs, 10 oz and 22 in. on March 8th, 2006 at 11:58 am.

Now for a little bit of explanation for what’s going on in the above picture. Baby Drew isn’t doing very well right now. Actually, he is doing very poorly indeed and doesn’t have a very positive outlook right now, but we are hoping to change all that. He was born with some serious complications and is currently on a heart/lung bypass machine that does his breathing and pumping for him. Also, he’s really StayPuff Marshmallow Man-like in the picture because they pump a lot of extra fluids into him. Those 2 red tubes up by his head are tubes that go directly into his Super VenaCava vein and go down into his heart. They carry blood to the ECMO (the heart/lung bypass machine) and back for him.

That’s pretty much the gist of it. He has quite a few serious complications and a very long and difficult road ahead of him but those are stories for another day.

Published Mar 13 2006, 05:48 PM by Raymond Lewallen

Filed under: Generalities

Comments

Eber Irigoyen said:

oh wow...
on March 8th, at 11:something AM but 29 years ago, I was born

hope your baby gets better

# March 13, 2006 7:11 PM

Marko said:

I wish you and your family well. We hope things work out with Drew.

# March 13, 2006 7:20 PM

Erik Porter said:

Good luck, Lewallen family...we're thinking about you and your son. Take care...hope he gets better soon!

# March 13, 2006 7:28 PM

johnwood said:

Oh man, I really hope things improve... being a fairly new father I feel for you man. Seeing a child suffer is just the worst thing in the world. All the best.

# March 13, 2006 7:31 PM

Jeremy Miller said:

My wife and I are wishing you the best
Raymond.

# March 13, 2006 8:34 PM

Mike said:

Thoughts and prayers with you and your family. Hoping for the best for little Drew. Stay strong.

# March 13, 2006 8:52 PM

Ryan Whitaker said:

Congratulations on little Drew! He's a good-looking boy with a great head of hair! We will continue to pray for you, Drew and your family. Let me know if you need anything, my man.

# March 13, 2006 9:30 PM

Jason Mauss said:

Congrats to you and your family Ray. Hope Drew is able to pull through this as well as he possibly can. Let me know if there's ever anything I can do for you man, seriously.

# March 13, 2006 10:25 PM

Robin Curry said:

Just want to echo the sentiments of others in congratulating you as well as offering prayers for Drew. My wife and I will pray that he will have a speedy road to good health. Blessings to you and your family.

# March 13, 2006 11:19 PM

John Papa said:

Raymond ... Congratulations to you and your family! May God bless you all and help you through this to a healthy future.

# March 14, 2006 12:00 AM

An Ideal Boy said:

Congratulations!!

And my best wishes to your family for a bright future.

# March 14, 2006 12:45 AM

public MattBerther : ISerializable said:

I saw a post from Raymond Lewallen earlier today announcing the birth of his son. Eagerly, I went to his site to wish my congratulations. I have to say I was not ready for what I saw. It seems that...

# March 14, 2006 12:50 AM

optionsScalper said:

Raymond,

My sentiments are of those of the other commenters:

Congratulations on the new baby. I have a 16 y.o. daughter and we've faced many things, but never anything such as this. You are in my thoughts and prayers. May your new son pull through this moment and fight for his life. May God give all of the Lewallen family the strength to meet this and I hope that one day baby Drew will look back on this as "just a bit of a tough start".

---O

# March 14, 2006 1:18 AM

Jim Losi said:

What a precious child. Having a 2 year of my own, I can understand how you must feel. I pray for your son and I pray for strength for you and your family.

# March 14, 2006 7:45 AM

Josh Myers said:

Ray, Congratulations on baby Drew - he's beautiful. Our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.

# March 14, 2006 8:13 AM

Raymond Lewallen said:

Thank you all. When we told my 2 year old daughter that Baby Drew is sick, she said "Baby Drew need tylenol. Baby Drew need band-aid. Baby Drew all better now." Life is so simple when you're 2 years old :)

# March 14, 2006 8:33 AM

Casi said:

From SENEGAL (Africa) I pray for baby Drew and his parents. God will take care of you baby.

# March 14, 2006 11:35 AM

Scott said:

Good luck, I hope he pulls through and this all just turns into an "interesting story" to tell when he's older.

# March 14, 2006 1:18 PM

Stephen Nelson said:

Every day is a blessing. My prayers are with you and your family.

# March 15, 2006 9:58 PM

Tim said:

Having been through a similar situation...my prayers are with you

# March 20, 2006 10:09 AM

Tobin Titus said:

Congratulations on your boy. I'm very sorry to hear that he has some complications, but I'll definitely keep him, you and your wife in my prayers.

# March 29, 2006 6:24 PM

Liz said:

have been keeping up with baby Drew from Jana's site. I am glad that he is improving. I hope that when he is 16 and crashes your new truck ( and walks away without a scratch), that you remember just how incredibly miraculous a guy he is! ;>0 You guys are in our prayers!

# April 4, 2006 2:46 PM

Jana aka The Wife said:

Hey, get a better picture of the boy posted, will you?! :P He looks a lot different now.

# April 6, 2006 9:10 PM

Name (required)

Your URL (optional)

Comments (required)

Remember Me?

Enter the numbers above:

Add

About Raymond Lewallen

Working primarily in the public sector during his career, Raymond has designed and built several high profile enterprise level applications for all levels of the government. Raymond now works as a solutions architect for EMC. Raymond is an agile coach, Microsoft MVP C# and also president of the Oklahoma City Developers Group and Oklahoma Agile Developers Group. Raymond spends a lot of his time learning and teaching such things as Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Design Patterns and Extreme Programming practices and principles, to name a few. Raymond is also an advocate of Alt.Net. Raymond is primarily a framework guy, so don't ask him anything about UI :)

About Me