I'm completely ignorant on how much this kind of stuff costs. How much would you "wild ballpark guess" that a DDOS like this would cost, and how much would the DDOS protection cost? And who would you pay the DDOS protection cost to? Your server hosting company?
In simple words, you can afford DDoS protection if your site earns you a few hundred dollars a month.
Cloudflare (which BTC-E uses now) offers DDoS protection woth plans starting $200 a month
Assuming "few" means "5", I think you have to earn a bit more then a few hundred dollars a month to make a $200 a month plan viable. Considering DDOS won't be constant, it might make more sense just to bite the bullet and suffer for one week every few months or so rather then pay the protection.