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 finally the mother of a toddler after dealing with conception issues for ten years, riding high. Suddenly in spring she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The musician, actual name Jessica Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The album, her latest release, was supposed to be an transparent story, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The initial release, No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Later next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and she was giving interviews about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while all the while dealing with the disease. Four weeks after she went public, and in July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” glance. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to call off performances because she’s awaiting reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is sporting a light brown synthetic jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, beige footwear and big frames. Imagine motorcycle style meets vintage look. “It seems like I’m in the 70s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, recalling the picture. “They used to call me that!” She smiles. Jessie is fast-thinking, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance next year. “I enjoy humor. When performing I often tease the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was getting ready for an appearance at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I quickly sought to get it examined, had an scan, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I responded, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d call on the start of the week. By then the singer had assured herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was inopportune to receive a diagnosis when she had so much on.
“Just two weeks before from launching this thing after eight years without an album and an extended break. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call thinking it’s all going to be positive, and she says, ‘You might want to sit.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your reports have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She viewed the procedure terrifying and absurd. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. In urgent cases you are wheeled, but now I just walked with a hospital gown and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “Cancer is awful, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my one side now resembles a fruit under fabric.” Another grin. “At least the nipple remains.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she observes, are now “different sizes. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”
Previous Struggles
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She believes her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s experienced in medical emergencies. Many times they occur alongside professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or blow, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Truly, I feel fate says, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She takes me back to her childhood, already starting her career featuring in the stage in a musical (she was selected at the age of 9). That’s when she was told about the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as lightheadedness and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She fast-forwards six years, and 17-year-old Jess has become part of the female band the group while studying at the Brit School. “I secured a deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a collision and my throat was injured and I lost my voice for a long period.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
