Happy New Year everyone from this side of the planet!

May it hold all the things you might hope that it could.... And perhaps some even better bits!

Well another year is rushing to an end, and the "festives" are upon us all.

Some will be enjoying this time of the year with their families and friends, others may be travelling life's journey solo. Regardless of whomever else is around you this festive season, be kind on yourself!

If you've been dealing with pain all year, may you get at least these few days so filled with joy and good cheer that you forget the pains that have been tormenting you.

If you're dealing with a new found set of abilities which are far below what you thought you should have or had previously become used to, may you make the mental and emotional adjustments and also learn that it is okay to ask for help sometimes.

If your ego is still bruised and battered and you are either still angry at the world, or stuck in "poor me" mode, may your bubble quickly burst and you learn to just get on with it! Deal with what's happened to you and find a way to adapt and adjust.

If you can't, no one else is going to do it all for you! If you've been pushing people away from you because they can't possibly love the gimp that you've become, know that they can probably see more of you than you see when you look in a mirror. Take a moment to reflect and know that appearances are not everything. The inner person is still the same!

If you are pre-amputation, or the family or friend of someone who has recently lost a limb (or 2, or 3, or 4), just know that if the amputee is adaptable by nature, they will soon adapt. Read some of the profiles here and be inspired! I know I am inspired when I read about and see the likes of: Amy, Melissa, Susie, Josh running on one leg, Dancing on one leg, etc.... Nothing seems to slow these people down!

So, may all your stockings be filled with delights, the faces about you be bright and smiling, and your find peace, contentment and acceptance within yourself...

And above all else, may your Santas all be a whole lot jollier than the one in this pic! ;)

For those of you in the northern hemisphere, enjoy your cold temperatures and possibly snowy days all rugged up and enjoying a roaring fire! For the rest of us in the southern hemisphere who are suffering through days on sun drenched beaches wearing little more than a thong and a smile, may you find a banana lounge to take a load off and get to relax for a while! Whether you're shivering, or trying to find some shade and a cool breeze, may this festive season give you some of the best days of your life so far!

Well, I've been here for two weeks now and I've noticed there's an awful lot (or is that a lot of awful? ;-)) information that is spread around everywhere.

Some people arrive and are lost with what they need to do next.

Some people have come looking for answers but don't know where to look or how to ask.

Having been involved in various forums in the past I thought it would be a good idea to put all of the stuff into one place. A first port of call, or knowledge base, or Frequently Asked Questions (F.A.Q.) styled area.

So, there's a new group called Self Help

Everyone is welcomed to join and add their suggestions, feedback and entries.

If you have some brilliant stuff that everyone should know about, but don't know how vbest to present it, make your suggestion to me, and we'll figure out how to include it.

The intention is to link to other resources rather than copy the text or breach any copyrights.

The group is set up as a structured forum. There's even a section on how to best find your way around Less Than Four.

If you want to just have a chat with everyone else, please continue to do that via the Discussions Group, or messaging each other directly or via blogs. If there is anything fantastic out there that more people should get to see, add a link or a suggestion into Self Help.

Well, I live here so I suppose it's up to me to run a sweep?

As it's not practical to do this for money, maybe it should be for "YAY points" or something? Or maybe just for the excitement of drawing the winner?

There's currently 24 horses in the race, and you don't pick your horse, it's allocated to you by a random draw. I don't follow the horses, so I'll be using a hat with numbers on it.

The first 23 people to respond before say 1PM Melbourne time will be allocated a random horse which they can develop some affinity with before it runs in the 3PM 2007 Emirates Melbourne Cup.

The current guide looks like this:

Tab Horse BR WT Trainer Jockey
1 TAWQEET (USA) 3 57.0 David Hayes D Dunn
2 BLUE MONDAY (GB) 14 56.0 David Hayes N Rawiller
3 BLUTIGEROO 12 55.5 Colin Little L Nolen
4 GALLIC (NZ) 24 55.5 Graeme Rogerson S Arnold
5 RAILINGS 18 55.5 Roger James G Childs
6 EFFICIENT (NZ) 10 54.5 Graeme Rogerson M Rodd
7 MAYBE BETTER 7 54.0 Brian Mayfield-Smith C Brown
8 TUNGSTEN STRIKE (USA) 2 54.0 Amanda Perrett D Holland
9 ZIPPING 22 54.0 Graeme Rogerson D Nickolic
10 BLACK TOM 21 53.5 David Hayes P Hall
11 MASTER O'REILLY (NZ) 17 53.5 Danny O'Brien V Duric
12 PURPLE MOON (IRE) 15 53.5 Luca Cumani D Oliver
13 LAZER SHARP 16 52.5 David Hayes S Shinn
14 ON A JEUNE 4 52.5 Andrew J Payne K McEvoy
15 SCENIC SHOT 19 52.5 Daniel Morton M Zara
16 SARRERA 23 52.0 Michael Moroney S Murphy
17 SCULPTOR (NZ) 8 52.0 Peter Mckenzie Ms L Cropp
18 DOLPHIN JO 1 51.5 Terry & Karina O'Sullivan Ms C Lindop
19 DOURO VALLEY 13 51.5 Danny O'Brien J Winks
20 SIRMIONE 20 51.5 Bart Cummings P Mertens
21 THE FUZZ (NZ) 11 51.5 David Hayes C Williams
22 ESKIMO QUEEN (NZ) 5 51.0 Michael Moroney C Hewitt
23 PRINCESS COUP 9 51.0 Mark Walker N Harris
24 MAHLER (GB) 6 50.5 Aidan O'Brien S Baster

I know - The other people who go in the sweep have to participate in this:

• Winner gets 5 compliments from each of the other sweep entrants
• 2nd gets 2 compliments from each of the other entrants
• 3rd gets one compliment from each of the other entrants
• Last - we all find a joke to share with them to cheer them up!!

Note the following is a link to the end of the race:

http://wwos.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=318260

I dearly loved my motorbike! I spent most of my money on it, and was always outside doing something to it.

Mike's motorbike conversions

I bought it secondhand and had recently stripped it right down and lovingly rebuilt it. It was only back on the road for less than a month when I was travelling to work on the 20th November 1979 and never made it to the office.

It was about 7:30 in  the morning and I was heading in for my 7th day in a new job. I pulled up at a set of traffic lights between two cars and took off when the lights changed. Quickly getting to the speed limit and then just cruising.

Up ahead of me a bright yellow sedan pulled out from the side road at a fair sort of speed. I was watching intently to see what the driver was going to do. As it was a divided road, I was guessing they were just going to get across the traffic lanes coming the other way and stop when they were behind the traffic island in  the middle of the road. I backed off the throttle and hit the horn. The front of the yellow car nose dived, so I guessed I was right with what the driver was doing.

Crunch time 

Next thing the yellow car has surged forward again, so I sounded the horn fully expecting the driver to give way to me. At the point of realising the car was not stopping AND had cut off any escape route for me I thought, "Oh shit"! I tried to turn as much as I could to escape where the car was going hoping the car would stop or turn away giving me an escape route. It didn't happen and moments later there was a horrible crunching sound and incredible pain in my right leg.

I was doing a Superman thing flying through the air over the car bonnet before I crumpled into the roadway and passed out.

I woke up as a tow truck guy was shaking me by the shoulders. "Hey buddy, who do we contact?" In those days tow trucks used to sit around the suburbs in strategic locations like crows waiting for roadkill and race to the scene of an accident in order to get the towing job. He shook me again. "Hey buddy I need to know who you want contacted."

My brain was digesting the input it had. I was obviously still on the roadway from the few things I could see and this person who was in my face. I closed my eyes again and thought through my options.

"Hey buddy..." he started again.

"Give me a moment, I'm just considering who is the best option" I responded.

I thought about giving him my mother's details, but had a second thought that if I were still on  the road and had passed out, then things probably weren't too good! I then thought about my girlfriend and pondered how she'd take it. Thought about my mother once again and then pondered if there were any other options. As I couldn't think of anyone else's contact details I eventually told him my girlfriend's info. (This was in the days before mobile phones).

Having satisfied his aggravating needs I passed out again.

I woke up to the sensation of someone messing around with my legs and the sound of scissors. I opened my eyes and saw an ambulance guy cutting my trousers off me. I told him he shouldn't do that as they cost a lot of money. He responded, "They aren't much good to you now mate"! Again I thought, "Oh shit that doesn't sound so good!" and faded away into the blackness again.

They scooted me back to hospital in a mobile intensive care unit ambulance and into an intensive care ward with all the monitors on me.

I had lapsed into a coma (from the fat embolism I'm lead to believe). Perhaps it was all too much for my heart as it stopped later that day.

What's it like to die? 

I recall being totally deviod of feeling or emotion. A steady beep gradually drew my attention and I looked around behind me. I was looking at a hospital bed with someone laying in it and a whole swarm of other people milling around.

They all backed away and I saw the feet jerk on the person who was in the bed. I tried to move to get a better view of the person laying there and realised (later) that the curtain rails were blocking my sight. I needed to move up and to the left to see better. Upon recognising this, I moved up and to the left.

I could see better but the people milling about still blocked the view a bit. Someone was pounding on the chest of whoever was laying there.

The people milling about all backed away from the bed again, and at the same time I saw the electric paddles being applied to the chest of the person laying there, I got to see the face.

It took a short while to realise what I was looking at, but at the same point that I recongnised it was me that I was looking at, I returned to my body and felt it being jerked around.

I was not able to react or respond, but I could hear that the steady beep from earlier had become a heartbeat again. A voice proclaimed something like "He's back".

I was told later that I was only clinically dead for about 5 minutes however I remained in a coma for another 6 days.

Inside the black veil of a coma 

A coma is an "interesting" thing to experience! Perhaps they are different for individuals, and perhaps also due to whatever is causing them, but in my case it was a little like - washing in and out of conciousness.

Whilst concious I was totally unable to drive any motor nerves and thereby move anything at all. My receptors were functioning whilst "awake" though. I could hear my mother's voice when I concentrated, but I could not respond in any way to her.

I tried all sorts of things, but just exhausted myself with the mental effort of both coping, analysing and trying to do things which everyone takes for granted.

I couldn't actually feel her holding my hand, but I could sense my arm moving every so often, and could eventually comprehend when every so often when she stroked my hand, or squeezed it. My arm's movements coincided with her voice, so I was able to figure out what was going on.

It was totally frustrating to not be able to respond in any way. It was even worse to be laying there "awake" and have people talking about you like a piece of meat. I guess it was boring for various people to sit near someone who does not interact with them.

The doctors and their "obs" were probably my worst nightmare. I recall a number of times they came to do their observations whilst I was concious. They'd force my eyes open and shine a torch directly into them. It caused excrutiating pain from within my blackness!

I couldn't turn my head, close my eyes tightly or even push them away... When the torch was not directly in my eye, I could vaguely make things out, but I could not focus and then next thing they let go of the skin holding my eyelids open and blackness surrounded me again.

When I did wake up and could again operate my muscles, I had various tubes attached to me and I saw a great frame above me over the bed and ropes which headed out from under the blankets on the bed. When anyone bumped the weights that were hanging off the ropes I came to realise they were attached to me somehow as the knock would cause substantial pain in one or the other of my legs.

I learnt I was in traction as they had not been prepared to operate on me until my condition had stabilised.

The "hit" list 

The motorbike crash had given me a bit of a hit list of injuries:

• Compound fracture right shaft of femur
• Simple fracture left shaft of femur
• Simple fracture left neck of femur
• Hairline fracture right elbow
• Crush injury to right ankle
• Multiple gashes and gravel rash to both legs (the motorbike engine cooling fins had embedded themselves in me)
• Nerve damage in my left shoulder affecting my small finger and the outer half of my ring finger 
• A lump missing out of the back of my head
• A gash in my back
• Suspected ruptured spleen

Corrective surgery injury list 

The doctors in their efforts to repair me added the following:

• Rather large scars on both hips where rods and pins were inserted into my bones
• Huge scars on the fronts of both thighs where they peeled layers of skin off for skin grafts
• A huge scar on my left hip were a free flap graft (about 6" x 4" or 150mm x 100mm) was taken to apply to the hole in my foot. This didn't take and after it went black, it was cut off again about 3 weeks later
• A gash the whole length of my left forearm where a vein was surgically removed to replace a vein in my leg that had gone into spasm. (This vein also went into spasm and had to be thrown away)
• A huge gash up my leg where they chased a vein which was going into spasm