Lettuce and I are becoming fast friends.

I will admit that I've eaten my share of salads over the years, but lifestyle changes strongly recommended recently by my doctor mean I have to shape up or I might ship out prematurely.

For anyone who is my age, 51, or above, the litany is quite familiar; quit cigarettes, change to a more healthy diet, exercise, etc.

This time, it's no option.

Last Thursday morning, my bio system did something that I nor the doctors can't explain. It resulted in an emergency room visit and a series of tests over two days. It was not a stroke, thank God, but it could have been.

One doctor of mine said it was "a wake-up call."

OK. I'm wide awake now.

I have made the adjustments recommended by the doctor and I feel better now. One adjustment not recommended by the doctors is I have ended a strained relationship with my 23-year-old daughter, Cari, her husband, Jamie, and their two children -- my grandchildren -- Mason and Tristan.

The relationship was so strained that I didn't know I had a second grandchild and that a third, yes, he's a boy, too, is on the way after the first of the year.

The circumstances that led to us not talking to each other I won't go into here, but suffice it to say that family matters can be complex and there was wrong-doing on both sides.

My daughter and her family live miles away in West Virginia, a place I called home for nearly 20 years. They are doing fine, as a series of telephone calls and exchanges of e-mails testify. In fact, they couldn't look better, as the last set of pictures sent e-mail showed. I put them up on my bulletin board.

So the reconstruction continues. I am eating my salads -- and I did not know that there were so many kinds -- and I have an exercise machine in my living room to begin to increase the ledger there.

My goals? They really are quite simple.

Live life to the fullest. Enjoy family. Work hard. Play hard.

You know, the things that we are all thankful for this coming Thursday when we give thanks and celebrate that wonderful holiday.

I know that I will give thanks to my "wake-up call" since it has now put in back in contact with my only daughter.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Mason is the editor of The Marshall Democrat-News. Spectrum appears on Friday.