It was a few days before Christmas 2006 when Lorena DuBois discovered a lump in her breast.

She was 43 then, a Lewiston wife and mother of two teenage children. She’d been diligent about performing monthly self-exams, but the lump was already large when she found it.

“I always kind of wondered doing my monthly exams, if something ever showed up how I would know what it was?” DuBois said. “It was so big when I first noticed it, it was like you couldn’t possibly have missed it.”

By the New Year, a biopsy confirmed cancer. Shortly afterward, she had a lumpectomy.

And soon after that, DuBois learned the cancer had metastasized and spread to her bones.

“Once it’s metastatic, it’s not curable,” she said.

The diagnosis was devastating, the long-term prognosis scary. But what added unnecessary aggravation was the fact that some people thought breast cancer was no longer a deadly disease.

“Even friends and people that we’ve told that I have cancer are like ‘Well thank goodness you caught it early,'” she said. “Everybody thinks that you go through a few treatments and it’s over with and you go on with your life.”

So earlier this year, DuBois wrote Gov. John Baldacci and asked him to proclaim a Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day in an effort to bring more awareness – and, ultimately, more research funding – to a disease that kills tens of thousands of women a year.

The governor agreed.

Today is that day.

“It was pretty exciting. When I first got the e-mail from the press secretary from the governor’s office, I was like ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe this happened!’ And then when I got it (the official proclamation) in the mail, I went ‘Whoa! I really started accomplishing something.'”

DuBois’ breast cancer battle began two years ago. Those initial days and weeks were a blur: mammogram, biopsy, surgery, chemotherapy. She learned she had stage four breast cancer, which meant the disease had spread.

Few people around DuBois knew what she was going through and so she began digging through Internet sites looking for information, for support, for help from others in her situation. She found the assistance she needed, and on one of those sites – Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Network’s mbcnetwork.org – she also found a way to help.

The network was promoting Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day on Oct. 13. At the time, some cities had adopted the day but few, if any, states had. In May she wrote Baldacci and asked that Maine be among the first.

Her letter was just four paragraphs long but emotional.

“There are so many activities and support groups surrounding breast cancer, but they all focus on the women who can be cured,” DuBois wrote. “There is so little attention paid to those of us living with it every day knowing we will eventually die from it. We live day to day and CT scan to CT scan waiting for the news that our latest treatment isn’t working any longer and we are running out of options.”

The governor’s office receives a lot of proclamation requests every year. DuBois,’ however, garnered some attention.

“It’s a good cause and something the governor thinks that people need to be made aware of,” spokesman Dan Cashman said. “So people understand it does exist and people who have breast cancer and beat it aren’t necessarily out of the woods, and there are services to help them cope and fight.”

He officially proclaimed Oct. 13 Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day.

DuBois was so excited by the governor’s willingness that she also approached Mayor Larry Gilbert about a similar proclamation for Lewiston. Gilbert agreed and will make his official proclamation this week.

Her friends also got similar proclamations for their own hometowns.

“It’s taking root,” DuBois said.

Two years after her diagnosis, DuBois, 45, is feeling good. She and her husband celebrated their 25th anniversary in April. She continues to work full time as a payroll manager for Tyler Technologies in Falmouth.

But the cancer is in her bones and has eaten away at her lower back, so she takes medication to manage the pain. She also worries about her 18-year-old daughter’s future, since breast cancer has a genetic tie.

She hopes that awareness will bring research funding and research funding will bring results.

“Obviously there’s a lot of money spent on awareness and making sure everybody gets their mammograms,” she said. “But we just need so much more money spent on trying to cure it.”