‘Everything Here is for Me and Women Like Me’

The entrance to Eden dominates the lobby of the Florida Hospital Cancer Institute.

By Harry Wessel • Photographs by Greg Johnston

Tall, tan and fit, Linda Dove is a picture of health despite what she’s been through the past couple of years. She smiles and even laughs as she recounts the experience of being diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer in her late 40s, enduring a double mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation treatments and, finally, reconstructive surgery.

“It’s a journey I wouldn’t wish on anyone, but it’s a journey I wouldn’t trade for anything. It prioritizes life for you,” says Dove, director of curriculum services for Orange County Public Schools who lives in Longwood with her husband of 28 years, Warren, and their “spoiled rotten” Yorkshire terrier, Lucy.

This is a woman who has benefited from good medical care and the support of family and friends. But she’s had one other thing going for her: Eden Spa, at the Florida Hospital Cancer Institute. The facility offers not only pampering but help and support in times of need. Open to anyone, “Eden: The Spa for Image Discovery” specializes in products and services for cancer patients, who are also given priority with appointments. That includes specialized garment fittings in the spa’s largest room, “Harriett’s at Eden.”

Eden (top) also features wigs, bandanas and other head coverings. Adjacent to the boutique is the spa (bottom), offering services including pedicures, manicures, hairstyling and massages.

“What Eden has done for me, it’s helped me to be normal,” says Dove. “I never wanted anyone to look at me and say, ‘She has cancer.’ I want them to say, ‘That’s Linda.’ That’s what Eden did for me.”

Across town at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Care Center Orlando, Sara Massy has similar grateful words of praise for that institution’s low-key facility, called simply “Harriett’s.” While there are many differences between M.D. Anderson’s boutique and Florida Hospital’s combination boutique and spa, each were recipients of $500,000 gifts from Central Florida’s best-known and best-dressed philanthropist, the indefatigable Harriett Lake. The generosity of Lake is why similar names are used by otherwise competitive institutions.

Harriett’s “makes you feel like you’re in a store, not a hospital, and I usually have it to myself,” says Massy, 61, of DeLand, who underwent a mastectomy earlier this year. “It’s really nice to have a place like this. It’s not like going into any old store and picking out one thing that might be good for a breast cancer patient. Everything in here is for me and women like me.”

Both Harriett’s at Eden and Harriett’s are feminine, intimate spaces that reflect Lake’s distinctive design aesthetic. But it didn’t start out that way at M.D. Anderson’s boutique, which opened in April of 2006.

Harriett’s (top), on the third floor of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Orlando, offers breast cancer patients a wide variety of useful, fashionable items at no charge. Sara Massy (bottom) stops in often at the center’s one-room boutique, which, she says, “makes you feel like you’re in a store, not a hospital.”

An experienced interior designer had picked out the room’s colors, furnishings and decorations. “The first time Harriett walked in, she said, ‘I don’t like this,’” recalls Dr. Clarence Brown, the center’s president and CEO. “She made us take everything out and replace it with what she selected. So it truly is Harriett’s boutique.”

The third-floor facility, where items are free of charge to breast cancer patients, is operated by Women Playing for T.I.M.E. (WPFT), a breast cancer awareness and support group that has raised upward of $6 million for breast cancer education, research and treatment.

The redesigned room is warm and personal. Brown notes that the only change Lake did not make was the large, framed photograph hanging on the far wall. It’s of WPFT’s founders, the late Sheila Solomon and Elaine Lustig, a close friend of Lake’s.

“We see up to 20 patients a day in our breast care center,” Brown says. “Only about a fourth of those women will be diagnosed with breast cancer. It’s only those women who would even know about the services that Harriett’s provides.”

Heart-shaped pillows available at M.D. Anderson’s boutique bring relief and comfort to patients recuperating from breast cancer surgery.

Massy first visited Harriett’s after her bad-news diagnosis in May. “I came in to discuss my surgery, and it was right here. I’m a shopper, so I walked in. This is a wonderful place. I come in here every time I come for an appointment.”

There’s always a tasteful variety of hats, scarves, bags, T-shirts and the like, Massy says, and the selection changes often – thanks to WPTF volunteers who restock the inventory. Other offerings include bandanas, visors and pocketbooks, along with specialized items such as deodorants and powders for highly sensitive skin and camisoles with pouches for holding drainage tubes. There are even heart-shaped pillows that fit snugly between arm and torso.

“The pillows are wonderful, because everybody needs them,” says Massy, who credits the pillows with allowing her to sleep in the weeks following her surgery.

After shopping, Massy usually leaves a donation, although it isn’t required. “A lot of people can use these things, but they can’t afford them,” says the world-traveling grandmother, who spends part of the year at her second home in Trinidad.

Items not stocked by the boutique are mastectomy bras and wigs, which require special fittings. However, patients are given a list of places in Central Florida where they can get these services, including the American Cancer Society.

Not on the list, most likely for competitive reasons, is Eden. However, Florida Hospital’s Lake-funded facility provides both. Bra fittings are conducted in Harriett’s at Eden, a room reserved exclusively for breast cancer patients. “The mastectomy bras were a godsend to me,” says Dove, who also relied on the spa to find her a wig. Eden staffers not only found one that exactly matched her hair color, they trimmed it “so that people at work had no idea I was going through treatment or that I was wearing a wig. Meanwhile, I was bald as a bat.”

Dove brought the wig in every two weeks for washing and refurbishing, and while there treated herself to a massage. She no longer needs the wig, but still stops in for a massage every month or so. “I’ve lost some movement in my left arm – radiation shrinks the skin, and I lost some lymph nodes. Massage makes the arm feel so much better, and it increases the range of motion.”

Eden, which opened in May 2008, includes a retail boutique with hats, turbans, wigs, specialized make-up products and a host of other items helpful to cancer patients in general and breast cancer patients in particular. Harriett’s at Eden – along with a spa/salon featuring manicures, pedicures, facials, therapeutic massages, hairstyling and wig services – is in an adjacent, limited-access space.

Nothing is free at Eden, but many of the products and services are insurance-billable for cancer patients. A second Eden is slated to open at Florida Hospital Altamonte in early 2012.

Boutiques and spas that cater to the real-life needs of women with breast cancer fulfill an important role, says Brown, who has been with M.D. Anderson Orlando since it first opened in 1991. “It’s a very morale-boosting situation for these women, when they know that they can find something very attractive to help them get through their treatment and some of the physical needs of having this disease. It’s a very positive thing for them.”