You can’t imagine it, Jessie J remarks. At that moment preparing for her first album release in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for ten years, feeling invincible. Then in March she was diagnosed with cancer in her breast.
The artist, actual name J. Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The album, her latest release, was intended as an candid account, dealing with every moment of pain she’d endured since she last worked on songs (a gynecological condition, miscarriage, failed relationships, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The initial release, the song No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, was released in May and she was talking to press about how she was living her best life, while all the while coping with the disease. A month later she shared the news, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” expression. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every press talk, and they inquire, ‘Any updates?’ and I answer, ‘Well, not much…’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a studio in the capital. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, jeans with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and large glasses. Think motorcycle style meets vintage look. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, referencing the movie. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She smiles. Cornish is quick, unfiltered and filter-free. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance soon. “I enjoy humor. When performing I often tease the fans.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was preparing for an slot at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they said, ‘It seems benign; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘How about a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d reach out on the Monday. By then Cornish had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had many commitments.
“Just two weeks before from launching this thing after years away and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your reports have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I answered, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. They lead you. In urgent cases you roll down in a bed, but then I just walked with a gown on and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my one side now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a rough time. Such disrespect! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is no stranger to illness. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so optimistic because she’s experienced in medical emergencies. Frequently they align with professional successes, acting as a reminder, or shock, to remind her not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has often paired with high points for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She recalls to her childhood, already making her debut performing in the London theater in a musical (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an IV drip, and being readmitted at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has become part of the trio the group while studying at the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Hey, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
