You can’t imagine it, Jessie J states. At that moment preparing for her comeback record in eight years, deeply enamored with her current love, and finally the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for a decade, riding high. Then in spring she was found to have breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jess Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The record, her latest release, was meant as an open book, tackling every moment of pain she’d faced since she last worked on songs (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with typical candour. The first single, her single No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. Her diagnosis. Then next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and the artist was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while at the same time living with breast cancer. A month later she went public, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She offers me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in the capital. She is wearing a light brown synthetic jacket, jeans with detailed white appliqués, beige footwear and oversized specs. Picture biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “As if I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, referencing the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. Cornish is fast-thinking, irreverent and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is aiming for her standup debut soon. “I like entertaining. On stage I frequently joke about the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
She was preparing for an performance at the ceremony when she noticed an abnormality. “I immediately went to get it examined, had an scan, and they said, ‘It seems benign; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. I have arm pain and tingling in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they replied, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was serious she’d contact on the start of the week. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to receive a diagnosis when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from releasing the album after eight years without an album and four years without a single. 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 jump on the Zoom thinking it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ The first thing I 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. During crises you are wheeled, but this time I just marched with a hospital gown and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but however Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my right breast now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The follow-up procedure is for health and appearance. Her breasts, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I reflected, no need to bully me, I’m already having a rough time. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Previous Struggles
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s experienced in health crises. Frequently they align with professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or shock, to make her recall not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘You having a good time? Sit down.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her youth, already making her debut featuring in the stage in a musical (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was diagnosed with the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as lightheadedness and palpitations. “I rehearsed between visits on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has become part of the female band the group while enrolled in the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
