Breast cancer survivor paying it forward
‘Elvira’s Gift for Hope Foundation’ provides financial relief to cancer patients
LINCOLN — Anybody who doesn’t believe in life after death should meet Elvira Protano.
Breast cancer killed her, she says. But she’s still here, better than ever.
Of course, she doesn’t mean she actually died, at least not physically. But the pain and loss of enduring five surgeries, including a double mastectomy and implant rejection, was so transformative that she doesn’t recognize the person she used to be. And she’s okay with that, because the person she is now is wholly dedicated to making breast cancer survivable for other victims.
“If you have attitude and you stay strong, you can survive anything,” says Protano. “I’m not afraid of anything. If I can survive cancer, I can survive anything.”
Diagnosed with cancer in 2014, Protano emerged from recovery to become the founder of Elvira’s Gift for Hope Foundation, a nonprofit that raises money to provide all kinds of relief for breast cancer victims. She’s raised thousands over the years for everything from putting food on their tables to paying their utility bills, and on Monday she’s going to get a big boost from a Woonsocket business, Interiors by Glo, located at 275 Social St.
Opened just a few weeks ago by Gloria Ayotte, Interiors by Glo has corralled $1,000 worth of donations that will be raffled off for Elvira’s Gift of Hope during a combination blood drive and open house for the new business. The open house will take place from noon to 2 p.m.; the blood drive, 2 to 6 p.m.
The prizes include spa treatments, cosmetics, restaurant gift certificates, designer candles and more.
Ayotte and Protano used to be neighbors on Gauthier
Drive in Woonsocket, but when Protano became ill, she was unable to work and ended up losing the house to foreclosure. Although she lives in North Providence now and operates Elvira’s Tax and Bookkeeping Services LLC on Old Louisquisett Pike in Lincoln, she and her husband, Michael, recently found a fixer upper in Woonsocket and will soon be moving back.
After Protano moved away from Woonsocket, however, she lost touch with Ayotte for a time and her friend wasn’t really sure what happened to her.
“She thought I was dead,” says Protano, but recently Ayotte found out she was alive – and doing very well. She admires Protano so much for her can-do spirit and selfless work on behalf of others that she’s decided to make Interiors by Glo a permanent location for accepting donations to Elvira’s Gift for Hope Foundation.
“She and Michael lost everything they worked so hard to achieve – a nice home, successful CPA and bookkeeping business, financial stability and life’s pleasures that come organically from working hard,” says Ayotte. “They suffered through the heartbreak of losing their dream home, financial hardship and the emotional and physical pain that the diagnosis brought to their doorstep.”
There are a number of nonprofit organizations associated with breast cancer, but what makes Elvira’s different, says Protano, is that it doesn’t support research. Protano thinks
there’s plenty of organizations out there already raising money for that, and she’s plainly skeptical about the sincerity of the research industry.
“Cancer is a money-maker,” she says.
Cure it and the spigot dries up.
Moreover, Protano doesn’t
keep any of the proceeds that are raised by Elvira’s Gift for Hope Foundation. It all goes to the direct aid of families facing financial struggles like those she and her husband grappled with.
“Everybody’s about research,” said Protano. “Let me do something to pay it forward.
I take care of the bills. I want it to go to the right places.”
Protano, 53, is just 5 feet tall, but what she lacks in stature she makes up for in energy. From the day she was diagnosed, she was determined to beat cancer, no matter what.
“I’m small, but I am a pit bull,” she says.
But it’s lucky she was diagnosed at all, says Protano. The first clinicians she went to told her she had “dense tissue” in her breast, but it was nothing to worry about. When she told her sister, Dr. Gina LaProva, a physician, her sibling demanded she get a second opinion.
Protano can still recall her sister’s exact words after she reviewed the new diagnostic imagery: “She said, ‘This is not dense tissue. This is cancer. It’s something to worry about.’”
She underwent five backto-back surgeries, including an attempt to reconstruct her breast with implants, which her body rejected. Ultimately, she decided she was done and surgeons “carved a hole in my chest.” She has no feeling in her chest because there’s been so much damage to her nerves.
One of the ways she copes with the challenges is through humor. Chemotherapy caused all her hair to fall out, but when it grew back it came in curly, which it had never been previously, and it stayed that way. Now she calls it “chemo hair.”
But one of her favorite quips is on a T-shirt with this inscription emblazoned where her breasts would be: “These are fake. The real ones tried to kill me.”