You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J states. At that moment gearing up for her new album launch in eight years, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the mother of a toddler after dealing with conception issues for ten years, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was found to have breast cancer.
The artist, real name Jessica Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The album, her latest release, was intended as an candid account, addressing every moment of pain she’d faced since she last worked on songs (endometriosis, miscarriage, unsuccessful partnerships, psychological manipulation, suicide) with her usual frankness. The initial release, No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Then second single, Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and she was talking to press about how she was living her best life, while all the while living with the disease. A month later she disclosed her condition, and in July she had a mastectomy.
She shoots me her best “Seriously?” glance. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Well, not much…’” Cornish has just had to call off performances because she’s still waiting for cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is wearing a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, beige footwear and large glasses. Imagine rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, referencing the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. Cornish is fast-thinking, unfiltered and filter-free. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is aiming for her standup debut in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. During performances I often tease the crowd.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
Cornish was planning an performance at the awards show when she noticed an abnormality. “I quickly sought to get it looked at, had an test, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the start of the week. By then she had assured herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“Just two weeks before from launching this thing after eight years without an album and no new music. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I log in expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have shown aggressive cancer.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you go on a gurney, but now I just strolled down with a gown on and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but however Luckily it was detected early. The surgery happened four months ago and my one side now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “The nipple was preserved.”
The subsequent surgery is both medical and cosmetic. Her breasts, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. So inconsiderate! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! It’s funny because I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”
Previous Struggles
Cornish is familiar with health problems. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so optimistic because she’s experienced in physical challenges. Many times they occur alongside professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her 11-year-old self, already making her debut performing in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I rehearsed between visits on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward several years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the female band Soul Deep while studying at the performing arts school. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was planning to release songs in 2020 I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a long period.”
Hey, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. At just 17? She nods|agrees
