Like her tiny patients, San Antonio physician born with odds stacked against her finds success

To see her now tending to premature babies, there’s no hint of the struggles Dr. Isabel Basaldu-Prado endured as a child.

“My mother suffered with schizophrenia, and my father, unfortunately, was an alcoholic,” said Basaldu-Prado, a neonatologist at Mission Trail Baptist Hospital affectionally known as “Dr. B.”

Basaldu-Prado and her family lived in public housing at Mirasol Homes in one of the poorest areas of the West Side. She said she vividly remembers hearing the gunfire, smelling the marijuana smoke and watching mothers prostitute themselves to support their families.

“I realized very early on that’s not the life that I wanted for myself or my children,” Basaldu-Prado said.

Even in her father’s drunken state, she said he had told her, “You are not going to be like me. You’re going to go to college, and you’re going to get an education.”

When she was 17, her father was murdered, so Basaldu-Prado said he didn’t live to see that she had followed his advice, ignoring the naysayers.

Basaldu-Prado said a school counselor had told her, “Girls like you shouldn’t be going to UTSA. Girls like you should go to SAC and be a teacher so that you can be at home with your children.”

She said even her paternal grandmother advised her against it, saying, “Girls like you need to get married and have children, and you need to find a husband who’s going to support you.”

The Edgewood High School graduate eventually would go on to medical school in Galveston and San Antonio to become a neonatologist.

Basaldu-Prado said after she did, her skeptical grandmother often boasted, “My granddaughter’s a doctor!”

She said it wasn’t easy, but it was well worth it.

“I love what I do,” she said. “I love babies. I love mamas.”

By giving their preemies a fighting chance, she said, “I see the struggle they went through. And it reminds me of the struggle I went through. And it brings me so much joy.”

For those worried college and student loans are too expensive and who believe higher education is beyond their reach, Basaldu-Prado said, “If you don’t invest in yourself, nobody’s going to invest in you. If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody’s going to believe in you.”