The Women's Health Boutique: A Safe Haven

Early in her career, Elisa Lawson packed $8,000 worth of prostheses in her car trunk and drove from Kent Island, Md., to the Pennsylvania line plying her goods to post-mastectomy women.

“I honestly started up with my breast forms literally in my trunk,” said Lawson. A Certified Prosthesis Specialist, Lawson learned her craft while working in the lingerie department at Nordstrom’s in the late 1990s. Clients with breast cancer were rare, she said; however, Lawson remembers the day she fitted a cancer survivor who made a sizable purchase.


“She felt like a million bucks when she left,” Lawson said. But the woman ended up returning everything because her insurance company wouldn’t recognize Nordstrom’s as a legitimate supplier of post-mastectomy products. “I felt so sad when the woman came back,” added Lawson. “It was so unfair that she couldn’t have these products.”

Inequitable practices by the insurance companies sparked Lawson’s interest in helping breast cancer survivors. She left Nordstrom’s determined to make a difference. “I felt like the business needed to move to a more personal setting and take care of the needs of every single woman,” Lawson said.

Her traveling sales business segued into a modest retail space at Mercy Medical Center, due in part to the doctors on staff. In 2003, Lawson opened The Women’s Health Boutique, a stylish and intimate shop where women can have privacy and explore their options.

“We work really closely with the surgeons here,” remarked Lawson. “We develop relationships with the patients before surgery; they learn to feel more comfortable with us and with their scars.”

In addition to custom silicone foam prostheses and silicone gel breast forms, The Women’s Health Boutique offers pre-surgical garments, post-mastectomy bras and camisoles, mastectomy swimwear and breast cancer survivor jewelry, scarves and handbags.

Lawson said that she’s not aware of any other hospital with a similar boutique. “What’s unique about Mercy is right here, next to the Breast Center.”