You can’t imagine it, the singer says. At that moment preparing for her first album release in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the mother of a toddler after struggling to conceive for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was found to have a breast cancer diagnosis.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jessica Cornish, is known for being brutally honest. The record, the provocatively titled album, was meant as an candid account, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d endured since she last worked on songs (endometrial issues, losing a baby, unsuccessful partnerships, gaslighting, suicide) with her usual frankness. The initial release, her single No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, came out in May and Cornish was speaking publicly about how she was living her best life, while at the same time living with her cancer. Four weeks after she went public, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” look. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s awaiting follow-up surgery.
We’re at a studio in the capital. She is wearing a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with ornate white designs, beige footwear and big frames. Think motorcycle style meets vintage look. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, referencing the film. “That’s what people called me at school!” She smiles. She is sharp-witted, bold and filter-free. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is aiming for her first comedy performance soon. “I like entertaining. When performing I basically roast the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was getting ready for an performance at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an test, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they said, ‘How about a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was bad news she’d call on the start of the week. By then Cornish had assured herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after years away and four years without a single. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I answered, ‘That’s unfortunate. What awful timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but this time I just marched with a gown on and my rear exposed. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but you know what? Thank fuck I found it early. I underwent removal a few months back and my right breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “The nipple was preserved.”
The subsequent surgery is both medical and cosmetic. Her breasts, she remarks, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I felt, no need to bully me, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! It’s funny because I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. My plans were disrupted.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is no stranger to illness. She feels her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s familiar with health crises. Frequently they align with professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or blow, to make her recall not to take anything for granted. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ Since childhood, it has often paired with 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 stage in the production (she was cast at the age of 9). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as lightheadedness and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has become part of the female band the group while studying at the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a long period.”
Wow, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
