HER name is Lourdes Bato, she learned acupuncture at 17 years old from her aunt who is an eye doctor.

Her grandfather was sick with cancer, she said, and her aunt initiated acupuncture treatment on him because he was diagnosed as on a terminal stage. The aunt needed someone to continue the treatment regularly, she was the person available. The grandfather was given few months to live with stage four cancer. But with Lourdes’ dedicated service, he was healed and Lourdes was inspired to pursue higher learning on acupuncture. She did not leave school and has in fact completed a nursing course in college, but her focus remains on acupuncture.

She has been practicing accupuncture hence. She’s 42 now with five children — two in college, two in senior high, and one in 8th grade.

She was first known as the acupuncturist at the Brokenshire Resource Center’s Traditional and Oriental Medicine Center in Madapo Hills in Bankerohan, Davao City. That was when she got to know patients who continue to seek her out.

She shared her knowledge and skills to those who joined the center, thus even as she left, a pool of accupuncturists remain.

She’s now with Bio-safe Center for Complementary Medicine Davao branch at No. 6 Juna Avenue in Juna Subdivision in Matina. She is looking forward to Bio-Safe’s plan to open a branch in Tagum City, Davao del Norte because that is where her family lives now.

On her free time, she does house calls, and that is how I met her and she started sticking needles into me to heal my carpal tunnel syndrome.

Is it working? I’m still on my second of five days…