Wednesday, September 01, 1999
Boutique caters to all women's health
BY SUE MacDONALD
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Liz Wood didn't become a nurse to push paper, which is what she found herself doing after 12 years in a nursing administrator's job at a southern Indiana hospital. She feels much more at home and needed at the warmly decorated Women's Health Boutique in Kenwood Galleria, the franchise store she opened in July.
It's a place where women at critical stages of life — pregnant, nursing babies, diagnosed with or recovering from breast cancer — can find specialized products that are often desperately needed but difficult to locate.
Among the products available are baby slings, prenatal back braces, nursing bras, nursing gowns and breast pumps for women who are breast-feeding, bras in sizes 32-AA to 50-I, compression hosiery, incontinence products, moisturizers and medical makeup, and a full range of breast prostheses, wigs and clothing for women dealing with breast cancer or its aftermath.
“The Women's Health Boutique started as a "cancer' store,” says Ms. Wood, co-owner with nurse Terri Bogan. “We're trying to expand the concept and touch women at all points of life, no matter what their needs are.”
Both women met when they worked at Margaret Mary Community Hospital in Batesville, Ind., where Ms. Wood directed the home health program and Ms. Bogan oversaw the hospice program. Both quit their jobs and underwent training through the Women's Health Boutique franchise to fit bras, breast prostheses and wigs.
Ms. Wood said she discovered the WHB franchise through her husband, Jim, who teaches marketing and small business start-up at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College.
She is particularly pleased with the personal touches around the store. Knowing that many women who will shop here are nauseated from pregnancy or chemotherapy treatment, each room has a bowl of peppermint candies. Customers can ask for free peppermint tea, flavored waters and ginger ale.
Two fitting rooms (for bras, breast prostheses, wigs) have adjustable lights, an outer door that locks for privacy and an inner door that gives the fitter direct access to the storeroom.
Each room also has a box of tissues.
“It's not always a happy time in that fitting room,” Ms. Wood explains, noting that many women have a hard time confronting the loss of their hair or a breast, or the surgical scars left from breast surgery.
Certainly, the idea fueling this store is not a new concept. The recently published Greater Cincinnati Breast Health Resource Guide lists 30 retail or professional Tristate businesses that offer similar products, but some are hair salons that specialize only in hair and wigs, and others are mastectomy services that have a complete line of breast cancer products but no maternity or breast-feeding supplies.
Here, everything's under one roof, including nursing bras in extra-large sizes and Velcro-closing camisoles for women who can't raise their arms above their heads immediately after breast surgery. There's also a library room with videotapes, brochures, books and pamphlets on a variety of women's health topics.
“One of the things we feel qualified for helping people is education — explaining to women what has happened, what will happen, what comes next,” she says. “This seemed a perfect combination of our nursing backgrounds and our desire to get back to work with people and patients.”
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