One of the toughest things for me in terms of my medical care is trying to make decisions. I know that a lot of people avoid this problem by having their doctors make their decisions for them. I can’t do that though; I think that it’s really important for individuals to be informed about their own health care and to advocate for themselves when working with their doctors in order to get the best results.

A lot of people will just go to the doctor that has been recommended to them and will then take that doctors advice about what to do for their problems. I’ve never done this. I do a lot of research into which doctors I want to use for different problems. I then ask a lot of questions of those doctors and make sure that whatever we’re doing is really individualized to my own needs.

I’m not saying that I don’t trust doctors. I just think that individuals know themselves better than anyone else does. You know what your specific issues are. You can tell if medications are working right or not. You have a gut feeling about whether one solution is better than another even if it’s less traditional. I think it’s important to listen to yourself and to advocate for those things that you know you need. If you have a good doctor, the doctor will be happy that you’re so involved in your own care.

Learn more about patient safety.

Tags: advocate, doctors, health, hub pages, kathryn vercillo, medical, patient safety

I recently wrote on article about culinary school vacations which is a type of travel that includes learning to cook local foods during your stay in an area. This seems like it could be a really great experience for someone who really enjoys cooking, learning and tasting local foods. Although I somewhat like those things, I don’t think that I enjoy them enough to truly have an interest in culinary school vacations. However, writing the article got me thinking about the different types of classes that you can take as a part of your travel and there are certainly some that interest me.

Language classes are the most obvious. I think it’s important to try to learn the local language any time that you travel somewhere. While it’s good to get some of the basics out of the way before the trip, I think an inmmersion class at the start of your vacation is a great idea if you’re going to be there long enough to benefit from it.

Classes that are specific to things that are popular in a local area are also coming to mind. I’ve gotten very interested in visiting Buenos Aires recently so I’ve read a lot of books by people who have traveled there. All of them seem to suggest that it’s a good idea to take tango classes while you’re there since it’s such an important part of the culture and it’s the best place to get good instruction in the dance.

Mostly I think I’m interested in shorter-duration classes than all of these, however. I’m interested in taking classes that can be completed in a day or two but which will add to my overall experience of the trip. For example, I might take a class in scuba-diving and then go diving at my destination. Or I might take a class in the history of the area or the area’s art movements while I’m there to learn more about those aspects of a destination. This suits my attention span and travel style better than a continuing class.

Tags: classes, education, hub pages, kathryn vercillo, specialty travel, Travel, vacation

As mentioned earlier today, I think that it’s useful for me as a HubPages writer to take a look at how my hubs fare traffic-wise each month.

Here’s a look at my lowest-traffic Hubs for March and why I think they didn’t get much attention online:

1. Choosing a Restaurant for Valentine’s Day. How to pick a romantic restaurant.
2. The Perfect Valentine’s Gifts. Which romantic gifts are best?
3. Everyone’s Favorite Holiday Gifts. What do you want at Christmas time?
4. Tips for a Healthier Super Bowl Party. Great low-fat snacks for sports parties.
5. Great Wine Without a Great Cost. Good wine doesn’t have to be pricey.
6. Evaluating Credit Card Offers for College Students. Which deals are best?
7. Why to Improve Your Credit Score. There’s a reason that you really want to.
8. Job Trends for Real Estate Agents. What was going on with real estate jobs when this was written?
9. Small Business Marketing Guide. How to network and market for your small business (and small budget!)
10. Tips for Dealing with Frightening Changes in the Economy. How to cope.

It totally makes sense that the first four articles here weren’t getting traffic in March since they are seasonal articles that aren’t so appropriate right now (although some of the tips really aren’t time-sensitive). Several of the other articles are just old (older than a year) so that’s probably why they aren’t getting attention although I’m sad to see that no one is reading about how to deal with the economy’s changes since that’s important right now.

Tags: articles, hub pages, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, tips, web traffic, worst hubs, writing

I have been writing articles over at HubPages for two years as of this month. I’m always interested to see which articles stand the test of time and which ones fade away after their original publication. One of the best ways to do this is to look at the best and worth hubs each month.

Here is a look at the top ten articles for amount of traffic in March:

1. How to Delete a Browser Cookie. Tips for deleting browser cookies for Internet Explorer users.
2. How to Tell a Close Friend that You’re In Love with Him or Her. Thoughts on whether or not to tell a friend that you want more and how to do that.
3. Top 10 American Fashion Designers. A look at some of the great fashion designers that work from the U.S.
4. How to Open a RAR File. In case you need to open a RAR file and don’t know how.
5. How do you Know When Mushrooms Go Bad? You wouldn’t want to eat bad mushrooms.
6. Fat Profiles of Olive Oil vs. Canola Oil. Information on whether there’s more fat in olive oil or canola oil and what kind of fat it is.
7. Tips for Getting Rid of a Caffeine Headache. Many people want to give up caffeeine but they end up with headaches. Here’s how to get rid of them.
8. Indoor Activities that Bring Couples Closer Together. People who want to stay indoors together should figure out how to have fun there.
9. How to Build a Treehouse. Thoughts on how to start building a tree house and where to get more info to complete the project.
10. Swimming vs. Running – Calorie Burners. Which one burns more calories – running or swimming?

So the articles that people were interested in this month were a decent mixture of topics but the focus seems to be on food and exercise, tips for tech tricks and “how to” type articles. What do you think made people most interested in these articles in March?

Tags: articles, best articles, how to, hub pages, hubs, kathryn vercillo, top hubs

I am originally from Arizona but my father was born in Ohio and we spent quite a bit of time vacationing there as kids. Although I can’t say that I’ve seen the entire state, I’ve definitely seen a good chunk of it and I can say that there are some interesting things to see there.

It’s a different world from San Francisco, for sure. The way of life is different. Even the urban areas seem to be at a slower pace than the pace I’m used to out in California. The way people treat each other seems different – neither more friendly nor less so than here but different somehow. It’s not a place that I consider to be right for me but it’s definitely one of the homes of my past.

Like many other states, Ohio has a few different sides to its personality. It’s neither liberal nor conservative (or may be either, depending on where you are). It’s got some urban areas and some rural areas and some college towns that incorporate a little bit of both urban and rural places. It’s got high-tech areas and Amish country.

Check out my suggestions for ten cities in Ohio to visit if you want to get a better sense of what the entire state is all about.  And then let me know your thoughts on different Ohio cities because I’d like some insight into what others make of this state that means something to me.

Tags: best cities, cities in ohio, hub pages, itinerary, kathryn vercillo, ohio, ohio cities, planning, Travel, vacation

One of the funnest blog carnivals that I’ve been a part of recently was a blog carnival called Make It From Scratch which, as the name suggests, consists entirely of posts about things that you can make yourself. A number of these posts were recipes for things that you can cook, including my recipe for vegetarian bigos.

Other recipes that can be found through the links at this blog carnival include recipes for almond milk, peanut butter balls, pasta carbonara, fruit tarts, tiramisu, pizza, pecan tassies, chocolate cake, chocolate mousse and even sauteed gourds and Irish potato candies. In addition to these recipes there were some other food and kitchen tips on things like dicing onions and canning.

Food isn’t all that you can make from scratch though. Other cool posts in this carnival were about kitty litter, fabric softener, paper flowers, cork mud mats, recycled Easter baskets and even how to make a chicken waterer. Don’t they all just make you want to go and make something?! That’s what I’m about to go do …

Tags: bigos, blog carnival recipe, cooking, diy, hub pages, kathryn vercillo, make it from scratch

I was a smart enough chick to be a bit of an odd kid. I started talking at around four months and started reading by the age of two and I imagine that it must have been more than a bit strange to look at me carrying on a decently smart conversation with popsicle smeared all over my mouth. I was a smart kid. However, I was no genius or child prodigy.

Child prodigies really interest me. These are kids who are so good at one area of study that they excel on an adult level before the age of 13. These are the kids who compose music when their peers are watching cartoons. These are the kids that can do math at a level I’ll never reach before they can reach the water fountain without a step stool. These are the kids who start college before they start puberty.

I’m particularly interested by female child prodigies. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, there just aren’t that many women listed in lists of female prodigies. Second of all, these women tend to excel in specific areas of life including poetry but not in male-dominated fields like chess or math. And third, those women who do make it into the annals of history as female child prodigies tend to have far more interesting lives than their male counterparts.

One woman that I’ve become interested in as I’ve studied female child prodigies is Sufiah Yusof. This chick was born in 1984 which makes her younger than I am but before I was in my senior year of high school, she had been accepted at Oxford University to study math. A female math child prodigy is an interesting and rare thing indeed.

However, things didn’t go so smoothly for Yusof once she was immersed in college. She became a runaway who gave up her studies in math for jobs in waitressing followed by work in prostitution. She got famous for awhile as the child prodigy who made it as a high-priced hooker and gave several interviews about how much she loved being a prostitute. Apparently, at least according to Wikipedia, she now regrets that time of her life and has returned to school and “respectable work” as a social worker.

I can’t tell you how fascinating I find all of this. And a lot of that fascination stems from the fact that I think it’s tough for smart women to make it in today’s society. Yes, there are many doors open to us that weren’t open to us before. But the social world for women remains different than it is for men. Our sexuality is tied to us no matter how much we’re praised for our smarts.

I can’t even imagine what it would be like to enter college at the age of 13. When I was 13, my precocious intelligence was taking a back seat to an interest in pop music and a concern for how to make it navigate the walls of a tough junior high school. Dealing with entering puberty was tough enough around my peers; I can’t even imagine how it would have been if I’d been amongst college kids.

I think there are a lot of people out there who would judge someone like Sufiah Yusof for the choices that she made. But I wonder, did she really have much choice? Propelled into an adult world before she was emotionally mature enough to handle it, is it really any wonder that this female child prodigy ended up where she did. And for that matter, is where she ended up really so bad in the end? Truly smart people use their smarts to figure themselves out and then to help others and that sounds like exactly what this woman is doing.

Tags: child prodigy, child prodigy prostitute, hub pages, kathryn vercillo, prodigies, prostitution, smart women, sufiah yusof, women, women in society

Last month I was so sick that I couldn’t get out of bed for almost a week and I couldn’t really do much else for about three weeks after that. It was awful. It wasn’t even serious really – just a cold that turned into a bit of a lung infection which exacerbated old problems with asthma. Once the cold was out of my system, I was able to get the rest under control.

However, I did have to go to a doctor about my asthma because I hadn’t been to one in ages. The trip went exactly as I expected that it would. He told me that I need to use a steroid inhaler every day forever and ever and I told him that I didn’t want to do that and we were basically at a standstill. It ended with me agreeing to try this inhaler for one month and come back to the doctor.

I tried the inhaler for all of two or three days before I decided that the side effects weren’t worth the trial. I also just felt like I was going against all of my gut instincts by taking this steroid inhaler so I quit it and now I have to go back to the doctor and explain that. And I really just don’t want to bother. I’ve spent years trying to figure out what to do about my asthma and I haven’t found any great solution that works for me.

Sometimes I really hate the hassles of trying to figure out the right medication and medical choices. I don’t know if I should use a steroid inhaler or an albuterol inhaler or keep trying to find a holistic solution for asthma that works for me. I don’t know if I should get my wisdom teeth removed or just leave them be. Heck, sometimes I don’t even know if I should take aspirin or Tylenol for a headache.

And I feel like I don’t really get information from my doctors that is helpful. The pulmonologist just says that I need the steroid inhaler end of story. The dentist insists that I need to get my wisdom teeth removed even though they don’t bother me but she can’t really give me a good reason why. I feel like I have to be my own advocate and do research myself but there doesn’t seem to be enough accurate information out there for me to know what to do. It’s frustrating! And it makes me really really glad that I’m basically healthy.

Tags: asthma, doctors, health, hub pages, kathryn vercillo, medication, medicine, pain relief

I went to a really fun local circus show not that long ago. Everything about the show was great but I have to admit that one of my very favorite parts was before the show even began when a clown came around and paitned my face with a beautiful little flower design.

I love to get my face painted. That probably sounds silly since I’m all grown up and face painting is for kids right? Well, I think that we should all try to capture the magic and fun of childhood as often as we can and face painting does that for me. I think it’s fun. And beautiful. And filled with fantasy.

Besides, did you know that face painting wasn’t always for kids? In fact, the history of face painting is a really long one and only the last two or three decades of it involve face painting as a fun activity for children. Prior to that, face painting was used by adults for reasons including spiritual ceremonies, entertainment, inclusion in sports activities, tribal affiliation symbolism and camouflage purposes for war and hunting.

Those are some pretty intense things to think about considering how fun face painting is today!

Tags: children, culture, face paint history, face painting, history, history of face painting, hub pages, kathryn vercillo, society

I come from a city in Arizona so I tend to think that it should already be warm and sunny by March. It’s a bit cool out in my new city of San Francisco today but I can definitely still feel that spring is in the air here. And it’s in the air on the web, too, because of the HubPages HubMob series filled with over 30 different articles on the topic of Spring.

I wrote about this topic to contribute to the HubMob series myself. Mine, mentioned earlier this week, was an article on spring cleaning tips. Granted, I think that this is something that should be done during the winter before it’s all nice outside which is why I’m trying to wrap up my own spring cleaning before the sun really starts getting strong here in San Francisco.

This HubMob submission of mine was only one of many that were really great and interesting and diverse in the topics covered that relate to spring. Some of the other great HubPages articles that came out of this series included articles on Spring Book Releases, Spring Wedding Themes, Spring Fashion in Paris and my favorite which is on Spring in Arizona.

This is a really great topic and one we’re likely to see a lot of around the web in the weeks to come. Let’s celebrate spring!!

Tags: hub pages, hubmob, hubs, seasons, spring, spring cleaning