You can’t imagine it, Jessie J states. At that moment preparing for her first album release in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in March she was diagnosed with a breast cancer diagnosis.
The artist, actual name Jess Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an open book, dealing with every moment of pain she’d endured since she last made an album (endometrial issues, pregnancy loss, broken romances, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with her usual frankness. The first single, the song No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Then follow-up track, the upbeat Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and the artist was speaking publicly about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while at the same time living with the disease. Subsequently she shared the news, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” glance. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for reconstructive surgery.
We meet at a studio in the capital. She is wearing a light brown synthetic jacket, jeans with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and big frames. Think motorcycle style meets vintage look. “As if I’m in the 1970s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the picture. “They used to call me that!” She grins. Jessie is fast-thinking, unfiltered and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her standup debut in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. When performing I often tease the fans.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
Cornish was planning an performance at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It seems benign; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. I have arm pain and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was bad news she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then Cornish had assured herself it was okay. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to receive a diagnosis when she had many commitments.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after a long hiatus and no new music. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I thought, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I join the call expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have come back as aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I replied, ‘That’s unfortunate. That’s not fucking great timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but this time I just marched with a gown on and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “Cancer is awful, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy recently and my one side now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The follow-up procedure is for health and appearance. Her breasts, she observes, are now “different sizes. The size doesn’t match. That’s impolite! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! Ironically I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. Cancer ruined that plan.”
A History of Health Challenges
She is accustomed to medical issues. She believes her outlook on her diagnosis has been so optimistic because she’s experienced in health crises. They have often coincided with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Take a seat.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied achievements for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her 11-year-old self, already beginning featuring in the stage in a musical (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the cardiac issue WPW, which can cause a tachycardia as well as dizziness and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an IV drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and young Jessica has become part of the trio Soul Deep while studying at the performing arts school. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a long period.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
