You can’t imagine it, the singer states. At that moment gearing up for her new album launch in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the mom to a little one after struggling to conceive for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with a breast cancer diagnosis.
The musician, actual name Jess Cornish, is known for speaking her mind. The LP, her latest release, was meant as an candid account, addressing every moment of pain she’d faced since she last recorded music (a gynecological condition, pregnancy loss, unsuccessful partnerships, psychological manipulation, mental health struggles) with her usual frankness. The first single, her single No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. The illness. Later second single, Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while all the while living with the disease. A month later she shared the news, and in July she had a mastectomy.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every media appearance, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s awaiting reconstructive surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in London. She is wearing a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and oversized specs. Think 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. Jessie is fast-thinking, irreverent and filter-free. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. When performing I basically roast the crowd.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
She was planning an appearance at the awards show when she found a lump. “I quickly sought to get it examined, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It seems benign; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. I have arm pain and numbness in my fingers whenever I rise.’ 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 contact on the start of the week. By then the singer had assured herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after eight years without an album and no new music. And she contacted me and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I was, like, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be good, and she says, ‘You might want to sit.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” How did you respond? “I replied, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you go on a gurney, but now I just strolled down with a medical attire and my bum hanging out. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but you know what? I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened a few months back and my right breast now resembles a odd shape.” She smiles again. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is for health and appearance. Her boobs, she observes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. So inconsiderate! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. Such disrespect! Ironically I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”
Past Medical Issues
Cornish is familiar with health problems. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with medical emergencies. Many times they occur alongside professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to be complacent. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘You having a good time? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has consistently accompanied achievements for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”
She recalls to her 11-year-old self, already making her debut featuring in the West End in a musical (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has become part of the girl group the group while attending the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I lost my voice for a twelve months.”
Wow, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
