It was 2006. Elizabeth Chabner Thompson, a radiation oncologist from Scarsdale with a family history of breast cancer going back to her great-grandmother, decided to have a prophylactic double mastectomy to avoid the same fate. Suffering the usual post-operative discomfort in recovery, she decided to do something about it.
After her operation, she returned to work part time at the plastic surgery practice of the doctors who operated on her. “I began to see that a lot of women were unsure about the recovery process, what they needed to do when they left the hospital,” said the 44-year-old Thompson. “So I started making up a tip sheet. I did this in the basement of my house for years. People said, ”˜I want to give something to a friend as way of making it easier on her.”™ The practice I worked for was thrilled.”
Thompson said she acted as a liaison, helping patients get ready for surgery and taking care of them afterward. “The doctors in the office loved it.”
It was in her basement in 2008 that Thompson came up with the idea of the “biffle bag.” The bag, named after her company, Best Friends for Life, or Bffl, would have everything someone might want or need after surgery ”“ a way to organize papers, medical appointment cards, a waterless toothbrush, playing cards, note cards, thank-you notes, mints, candy, tissues, socks and grooming implements. “And earplugs,” said Thompson. “Sometimes it”™s impossible to tune out the noise in the hospital.”
Thompson started her business in what she called “a crisis time in my house. My husband had lost his job. We had four kids between the ages of 5 and 9 and needed income. I was working part time in radiation oncology and plastic surgery practices. It was a very busy few years. But sometimes in the busiest times that”™s when ideas really crystallize.”
Thompson questioned why patients, despite advances in surgical procedures, still were wearing the 1970 model surgical bra. She decided to create not only the biffle bag, but a new line of surgical bras.
In 2010, she spent months “schlepping through the garment district” working with fabrics and sample makers and sourcing items for the bags and bras. She developed four bras, one named after her and used after breast implant reconstruction, and the others named for the great-grandmother, grandmother and mother with breast cancer in her family and used after radiation treatments. The Bessie bra, named after her great-grandmother, has pockets for prosthetics or icepacks, used by many women undergoing radiation.
Thompson formed her limited liability company, Bffl Co., in March 2011. Her out-of-pocket start-up expenses were “a couple of hundred thousand dollars,” she said.
All bags are assembled at the company”™s 173 Summerfield St. office in Scarsdale and are sold in retail stores and hospitals. As of May, the three-employee company was making about 300 bags a month. This June was the best month to date for sales, said Thompson.
Thompson said she has had offers from investors who want an equity share in the business. “But I always refuse. I am the sole equity holder. I don”™t want to sell out.”
Usually, she said, people who come up with ideas like hers “sell out to big companies ”“ a bra manufacturer who has never been in an operating room, and the company designs it. And it doesn”™t end up being what really has to be brought to market. The sky”™s the limit as to what we can do in the operating room but it”™s what happens after that that needs to catch up.”
Bffl also makes bags for post-surgical patients recovering from traumatic brain injury and from ovarian or other women”™s cancers and gynecological surgeries.
The comfort bag for brain-injury patients “has a foam grip so patients can use it when they”™re re-learning how to grip a fork or a pen,” she said. “It”™s hard to regain fine motor skills.” The pack also includes a white board communicator, “so patients can communicate basic commands by pointing to a picture,” said Thompson, and a gait belt for those learning to walk again. There are also concentration games to redevelop mental acuity.
Thompson plans to add to her product line a bag for Caesarean section patients ”“ “I don”™t want to talk about that one yet” ”“ and a bag for men recovering from prostate cancer surgery.
Breast-cancer patients”™ bags are priced at $100 retail, ovarian bags at $110 and brain injury bags at $120. Thompson said 15 percent of the net profit from sales is donated to a foundation related to the disease or injury for which the patient was treated.
The comfort bags are an especially useful service now, she said, when patients return home after outpatient mastectomies or only short hospital stays and have little follow-up care. “Actually, as it stands now, patients have the right to stay in the hospital for 24 hours,” she said. “But even at that, anesthesia has not worn off and they”™re on pain medication on top of that.”
This whole chapter of her life is somewhat ironic, said the enterprising physician.
“Funny thing,” she said. “I went through the surgery because I thought that it would put to rest my overwhelming concern about breast cancer. But it has become the focus of my work and my passion to help others by bringing them the little comforts.”
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