Cancer, it seems, is everywhere. One in three people living in the United States will be diagnosed with the disease during their lifetime.

Cancer can feel like a dark force, consuming not just the body but the mind and spirit. The fear it brings can isolate and make the landscape seem bleak.

So how is it that, coming back from a recent visit to Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City, I felt warmth and comfort?

A young couple sat behind me; the man had been recently diagnosed with cancer. The pair spoke excitedly of their visit that day, after the medical appointments were done, to the Intrepid, a military museum housed in a World War II-era aircraft carrier, docked at Pier 86 on the Hudson River.

“Intrepid” I thought was the perfect word to describe their stance.

The woman seated next to me, a retired teacher, listened to her husband as he sang along to the music that filled the van. He has Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

“He has a beautiful tenor,” his wife said. “He sang to me at our wedding.”

The source of this warmth and sense of well being was the driver, Francesca Lo Porto-Brandow. She is the driver both literally and figuratively of the Flutter Express.

She has used her own cancer and that of her father and her husband not to wall herself off or to wallow in self-pity but, rather, to help others along what she calls their “health-care journey.” We can learn from her.

This is her story.

Francesca grew up with her family’s Italian restaurant in Troy.

“I watched both my parents work really, really hard ….,” she said. “If I had to characterize them … I would say they’re both resilient and they love unconditionally — very grounded, they were hardworking and community driven.

“And at a very young age, I watched my parents give back to the community — and they gave without expecting anything in return.”

Francesca was a young mother with an infant son in the fall of 2020 when she wasn’t feeling well and was diagnosed with a sinus infarction. When she wasn’t getting better, she was diagnosed with walking pneumonia and sent for a chest X-ray.

The day of her X-ray, she was told to go to Albany Medical Center for an emergency CT scan; it was life-threatening.

The scan showed a tumor cutting off the blood supply to her heart — she had Stage 4 lymphoma.

She connected with a doctor at Memorial Sloan Kettering who’d done research on her kind of tumor and he worked with the doctors in Albany because she was too unstable to transport, hospitalized for 30 days.

“I was in a really rough place and they told my husband I had a 2-percent chance of survival ….,” she said. “I promised my husband from my hospital bed that if — I said when — I go into remission, and I get out of this, I’m going to do something to help other people.”

At the time, she didn’t know what that something would be.

“Later,” she said, “after mentoring people who are on their own cancer journeys and attending health-care conferences with doctors … I kept hearing over and over again how transportation’s a major barrier to care and I just thought, ‘Someone has to do something about this.’”

Francesca was experiencing that challenge in her own family as well.

In addition to her own visits to Memorial Sloan Kettering, her husband, who has a rare blood cancer, goes there as well and so did her father.

“He passed in February of 2022,” she said of the man she called her best friend, “but we put about 16,000 miles on my car, driving my dad every single day, the last three months of his life. He didn’t have a choice. He had a very, very aggressive form of multiple myeloma …. He didn’t want to stay in New York City.”

She went on, “All these experiences made me think, ‘There has got to be an easier way.’”

She contacted transportation companies but they weren’t interested. “It’s not profitable,” said Francesca. “It’s just the right thing to do.”

One company said she could charter their buses.

“I really had to think about that,” said Francesca. “I had a full-time job in corporate America … and this would be a really big undertaking but I thought, maybe we’ll just try it out.”

That was on April 3, 2025 — we spoke for an Enterprise podcast on the one-year anniversary of the Flutter Express.

Francesca’s goal was to remove the financial barrier for people who need treatment in New York City or Boston. One of the couples I rode with last month had considered selling their house to pay for the drivers they hired to take them to New York City.

Francesca has also founded a not-for-profit Flutter Club that partially subsidizes the cost of tickets for the health-care seeker and a companion. Information is available at flutterclub.com.

“There’s also an emotional barrier for people who may feel intimidated or scared to go into these big cities,” said Francesca.

I am one of them. I was driving my late husband back from a cancer appointment last fall when our car was hit on FDR Drive. We were grateful to have a mechanic who could put our car back together before my husband’s next appointment but I am wary of city driving.

Francesca worked for 15 years in executive coaching and also is a certified life coach. Her philosophy, she said, is to let the people around her guide the conversation.

“I want people to be heard and seen and understood, especially at a time where I feel like I see people sometimes on their hardest days and they need someone to listen and to talk to,” she said. “And I’m so honored to be in a position where I’m able to do that …. I get to know people and they get to know me, too. It’s a two-way street.”

Francesca also respects passengers who want to be silent. 

“Not everyone wants to share and not everybody has to … I’ve had some riders who just want to sleep. They just want to rest.”

Chartering a bus turned out not to be sustainable — a bus carries 56 passengers and there might be just two people signed up for medical care. Then she tried chartering an eight-passenger vehicle, which wasn’t much cheaper.

Without any grants, just community fundraising, Francesca was looking at buying a vehicle.

“It’s hard starting a new company,” she said. “There’s a lot of challenges.”

She was at an appointment for herself at Memorial Sloan Kettering when she started talking to shuttle-bus drivers on a break, admiring their Sprinter vans. They told her their manager was driving that day.

She asked the manager if she could hop on and ask him questions as he drove. He told her, “Today might be your lucky day.”

They had just had a meeting that morning about what to do with their old vans. In December, Memorial Sloan Kettering gave the Flutter Express four of their vans.

“Just because I was curious, and I think I love to connect with people,” said Francesca.

The van I rode in last month was donated by New Country Toyota of Clifton Park, which also does all the maintenance on Flutter Express vehicles and stores them for free.

“We’re so grateful for them,” said Francesca. “We also have Steven Bouchey of Bouchey Financial Group.

He is a cancer survivor and recently took the Flutter Express for a follow-up appointment.

“He donated the van, though, in honor of a little girl named Lily who just went through her cancer journey this past year,” said Francesca. “She’s 6 years old. She’s the cutest little girl and so strong and she’s doing very well now.”

Francesca stresses that the Flutter Express is not just for cancer patients but for anyone “going through a health-care challenge” who has appointments in New York City or Boston. Right now, round-trip rides are available on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, leaving from several places including Crossgates Mall in Guilderland. Francesca hopes to expand the service to other cities. Specifics are available by calling 518-217-5121.

The Flutter Express has transported people for fertility care, developmental disabilities, and transplants, she said.

Francesca came up with the name Flutter Express because she didn’t want “to sound so medical, because it’s not an ambulance.”

She explained, “For me, butterflies mean transformation, hope, healing. And the concept behind the transportation service, the Flutter Express, is to bring people to hope and healing and transformation while also feeling a sense of emotional safety, right? You’re protected.”

She chose the name Flutter Club to give people “a sense of belonging …. Your community has your back … this is all community driven.”

That sense of giving back to the community, which her parents instilled in her, is being passed on to her sons. They are young now but Francesca envisions them helping her and her husband with the Flutter Express, perhaps passing out snacks to passengers.

“My oldest son told me he was proud of me and he even shared with his class what we’re doing with the Flutter Express and the Flutter Club on his own …. To hear he’s proud of me is huge, and my husband’s very supportive … We’re in it together. This is a family thing.”

So what I learned from Francesca was not about cancer. Rather, it was about the difference one person can make.

Those are qualities any of us could emulate. We can listen to people so they feel heard and understood.

We can do what is right or what needs to be done even if it isn’t profitable. As Francesca’s parents taught her, we can give without expecting anything in return.

We can be resilient and spring back from difficulties with renewed strength and purpose.

We can reach out to others and find, even with something as cruel as cancer, people are willing to join us in helping others — it could be something tangible like a van given in the name of a 6-year-old survivor or something intangible like hearing a love song in a bus full of cancer patients.

“I find this work incredibly meaningful and purposeful,” said Francesca. “I’m grateful every day to be able to do this.”

And I am grateful for you, Francesca.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer, editor