You can’t imagine it, the singer says. At that moment preparing for her new album launch in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her current love, and finally the mother of a toddler after struggling to conceive for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in March she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The musician, actual name Jessica Cornish, is famous for being brutally honest. The record, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an candid account, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last made an album (endometrial issues, losing a baby, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with typical candour. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. Her diagnosis. Later second single, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and Cornish was talking to press about how she was living her best life, while all the while coping with breast cancer. A month later she went public, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every press talk, and they inquire, ‘Any updates?’ and I answer, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” Cornish has just had to postpone shows because she’s still waiting for cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is sporting a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, beige footwear and big frames. Picture motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, referencing the movie. “They used to call me that!” She grins. Jessie is fast-thinking, bold and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her initial standup show soon. “I like entertaining. On stage I frequently joke about the crowd.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
She was planning an slot at the ceremony when she noticed an abnormality. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It appears fine; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they said, ‘How about a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d reach out on the Monday. By then the singer had assured herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after eight years without an album and no new music. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call expecting it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your reports have shown aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘That’s unfortunate. The timing is terrible.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I fear going under. You’re escorted. During crises you are wheeled, but then I just strolled down with a gown on and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “Cancer is awful, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my one side now appears as a odd shape.” She smiles again. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she remarks, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I thought, no need to bully me, I’m already having a difficult experience. Such disrespect! Ironically I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
Past Medical Issues
She is familiar with health problems. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so optimistic because she’s familiar with physical challenges. They have often coincided with career highs, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to remind her not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘You having a good time? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She reminisces to her 11-year-old self, already making her debut featuring in the West End in a musical (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was found to have the cardiac issue WPW, which can cause a tachycardia as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She fast-forwards six years, and young Jessica has become part of the trio Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I lost my voice for a year.”
Oi, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
