In November 2020, a woman from Tetovo, 57 years old at the time, noticed something changing in her left breast. It wasn't the kind of discomfort she could brush off by telling herself it would probably go away on its own. As the days passed, she noticed something was growing, and she decided to seek medical help.
She went to the hospital, hoping to be examined as soon as possible. But the answer she got wasn't the one she expected. The appointment she was offered was several months away.
For someone who already suspected something was wrong with her body, even a few days felt like too much, let alone several months.
"I told myself I couldn't wait that long. I could feel that something wasn't right, and I didn't want to lose time. I didn't know what it was, but I knew I had to get checked as soon as possible. I just couldn't settle," she told Mollëkuqja, asking that her identity not be made public.
Instead of waiting, she booked an appointment at a private clinic in Skopje. She had the necessary examinations done and went home to wait for the results.
A few days later, the result came back, the one that would change her life. She had breast cancer.
"When I got the result, it was very hard. Even though I had somehow suspected it might be something serious, actually hearing the word 'cancer' is completely different. In that moment, you don't know what to think. So many things rush through your head," she says.
Ahead of her was surgery, and she had to find a doctor, schedule the procedure, and begin treatment.
With her family's help, they managed to find an experienced doctor they trusted. The surgery was successful, and a few weeks later she began chemotherapy at the Clinic for Radiotherapy and Oncology in Skopje.
If the diagnosis was the first blow, treatment was a different battle altogether.
Chemotherapy wasn't just about dealing with the effects of the illness and the medication. It also meant dealing with the chaos at the clinic, where patients gather in large numbers and a day of treatment can stretch on for hours.
She remembers the mornings when she had to leave early from Tetovo for Skopje. The waiting would start before the therapy itself even began. The hallways were packed, patients waited, and time kept slipping by.
"There were times I went early in the morning and had no idea when I'd get out. Hours of waiting. You're there to get your therapy, you're exhausted, you don't feel well, and still you have to wait. Just that atmosphere alone wears you down, and then on top of it there are complications, physical exhaustion," she recalls.
Still, she says that in those difficult moments, she found strength in her family, whose presence and emotional support, as she puts it, gave her the strength to get through treatment, even as chemotherapy began to leave its own marks.
One moment she remembers especially is losing her hair.
"That was hard too. When my hair started falling out, it hit me hard. But in the end you tell yourself it's temporary. The hair will grow back. What mattered more was getting better. I had to think about life," she says.
And so, step by step, chemotherapy came to an end. But for her, finishing treatment didn't mean she could forget about the illness.
After chemotherapy, regular checkups began. By then she wasn't going to the Oncology Clinic to receive therapy, but to check whether everything was still alright.
This part of her life also required a lot of organizing. Before seeing the doctor, she had to get preliminary tests done, including breast checks like ultrasounds and mammograms. But she couldn't always get these appointments when she needed them within the public system.
In such cases, she has turned to private clinics, which cost her more.
"When you need a checkup or an appointment, you can't always wait months. Especially once you've already been through this illness, you want to get checked on time. For breast ultrasounds, I've often gone private, because in the public system you have to wait for an appointment, and sometimes that appointment is set far in the future," she says.
For someone who hasn't gone through an illness like this, waiting for an appointment might seem like a minor administrative issue. For someone who has walked the road of cancer, that wait carries far more weight.
Every checkup carries the same question: has the illness come back or not.
That's why she doesn't want women to wait until they notice an obvious problem. Checkups, she says, should happen before any symptom appears.
"Don't wait for something to grow before you go see a doctor," she says.
Today, she carries on with her life as normal. She keeps up with regular checkups, takes care of her health, and tries not to let what she went through define her life.
But she doesn't forget what she went through. That's exactly why, when she talks about the illness, she doesn't want to talk only about the fear. She also wants to talk about how important it is to act in time.
"I tell women not to wait. If they notice something, if they feel something unusual, they should go get checked. Even if they have no symptoms at all, checkups should still be done. It's better to go and be told there's nothing wrong than to wait and later regret not having gone sooner," she says.
Her testimony for Mollëkuqja comes at a time when Pink October puts breast cancer at the center of attention, but behind the campaigns and the awareness messages, the everyday problems facing women dealing with this illness remain.
In North Macedonia, around 1,000 women were diagnosed with breast cancer last year. At the Clinic for Radiotherapy and Oncology in Skopje, about 7,000 oncology patients are currently in treatment. For many of them, treatment comes with long waits, an overloaded clinic, and trips from other cities to Skopje.
She has made that same journey too. But what worries her today is that women can do everything right, stay informed, seek help, get their checkups, and never give up, and still end up facing a system that doesn't always respond when they need it to.
This is also reflected in screening numbers. According to data from the State Audit Office, breast cancer screening coverage ranges from only 0.8 to 5.4 percent. Meanwhile, around 80 percent of patients, according to the data presented, begin treatment at advanced stages of the disease.
"I'm doing well today, and I'm grateful to everyone who stood by me. But we shouldn't have to wait for it to happen to us before we understand how important checkups are. Let women get checked on time. Let them examine themselves, let them go see a doctor, let them not wait for someone to call them in, let them get ultrasounds and mammograms when recommended. This can save a life," our interviewee said, closing out her account.
She beat cancer. But the road to get there taught her something else too: in the fight against cancer, a patient has to battle not just the illness, but the system as well.
This publication was produced within the framework of the project Queer and Present: Media, Rights and Safety for LGBTIQ+ persons in Pollog, which is implemented as part of the broader regional project Together for LGBTQI+ Equality, implemented by the Centre for Civic Education (CCE) in partnership with ERA – LGBTI Equal Rights Association for the Western Balkans and Turkey, Queer Montenegro, Queer Center Skopje, Tuzla Open Center, Open Mind Spectrum Albania (OMSA), and the Center for Social Group Development from Kosovo. The programme is funded by the European Union.
The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the Center for Equal Opportunities “Mollekuqja” and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union, CCE, or the project partners.
