by David Cruz 

Upon first glance, this boutique women’s undergarment business in Norwood looks typical–a cozy atmosphere, cream-colored walls and common items sold at a fashion-centric shop. But if you look closer, the Women’s Center at A&O Surgical Supply is just what the doctor ordered.

It’s managed by Valerie Pagan, a personable orthotist and prosthetist who manages the salon catering to women who’ve undergone a mastectomy, a surgical procedure where part or all of a woman’s cancerous breast is removed. The store at East Gun Hill Road and Putnam Place is quite unique, and perhaps the only one in the Bronx, according to a check in the online Yellow Pages.

With each visit, Pagan treats it delicately, understanding the trauma of a mastectomy and the apprehension in arriving to the Women’s Center.

“A lot of people are either fragile or in an emotional state,” said Pagan. “My job is to make them feel better.”

Pagan’s background includes working as an operating surgical nurse at Englewood Hospital. In most cases, she is on the road at cancer centers at Columbia-Presbyterian, St. Luke’s Hospital and Albert Einstein College of Medicine to evaluate, assess and fit mastectomy patients with the specialized bras.

The Product

Mastectomy bras—an undergarment with a pocket meant for a silicon-made prosthetic breast–is the signature line of product sold. Two fitting rooms occupy the salon along with a storage room housing various size bras and lymphedema sleeves. “Lumpectomy, mastectomy, breast surgeries, we fit them all,” said Pagan, adding the salon also sells the uncommon M size bras. “We’re full service.”

Pagan also looks upon a fitting from a physiological angle, factoring the weight of the prosthetic breast and symmetry. “There’s a lot of variables,” she said, adding Medicare covers the cost of one prosthesis once every two years and four mastectomy bras every six months.

The salon is an intriguing hybrid, mixing the medical needs of a woman with the cosmetic needs of a woman. “There’s nobody else that can, or very few people who do it, certainly not in the Bronx, on the scale that we’re doing it,” said Dennis O’Brien,

Pagan’s business partner and owner of A&O Surgical Supply Co., which abuts the center. The supply store at 266 E.Gun Hill Rd. is known for its specialized brand of medical equipment that caters to home needs. Equipment ranges, with thousands of supplies that include bathroom bars, wheelchairs, and even putty for stiff hands in stock.

In the back, a sign reading “It takes months to find a customer, seconds to lose one” can be seen hung by O’Brien’s office. O’Brien keeps to that mantra, knowing that “in this business you don’t want to lose your referrals.”

“If you disappoint the patient, they’re not coming back,” said O’Brien. “In this business it’s better to under promise than over-deliver.”

Competition has gradually become fiercer these days than in the over 40 years O’Brien’s been in the business, so much so that he keeps the names of some institutions confidential. Bronx Lebanon and Montefiore Medical Center are regular clients, with some clients in Manhattan.

Serving JGH-BID

Beyond that, O’Brien also serves as secretary for the Jerome-Gun Hill Business Improvement District, having been affiliated with the BID since the beginning. The change, he’s noticed, has been “phenomenal in what’s been accomplished.”

“The neighborhood was really in decline, there’s no other way to put it,” said O’Brien, recalling the neighborhood feel prior to the BID’s beginnings. “Shootings were common. Matter of fact we had bullets in the building here, from a shooting in the middle of the street at 3:30 in the afternoon.”

These days the neighborhood’s grown tame, and relatively free of graffiti and garbage thanks largely to the BID. As O’Brien sees it, “when people see graffiti and garbage, everything else is negative.”

BUSINESS BEAT