You can’t imagine it, the singer states. At that moment gearing up for her comeback record in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and finally the mother of a toddler after dealing with conception issues for ten years, feeling invincible. Suddenly in March she was diagnosed with a breast cancer diagnosis.
The musician, actual name J. Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The album, her latest release, was supposed to be an transparent story, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last worked on songs (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicide) with typical candour. The initial release, her single No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then next release, her song Living My Best Life, came out in May and she was speaking publicly about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while at the same time living with the disease. A month later she shared the news, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to postpone shows because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a studio in the capital. She is dressed in a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with elaborate white patches, cream boots and oversized specs. Imagine motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “As if I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, referencing the picture. “They used to call me that!” She grins. Cornish is quick, bold and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance next year. “I like entertaining. On stage I often tease the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
Cornish was preparing for an appearance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an scan, and they were, like, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d call on the start of the week. By then she had persuaded herself it was okay. The way she explains it, it was just bad timing to receive a diagnosis 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, ‘Is six okay?’ And I was, like, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I log in expecting it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have come back as aggressive cancer.’” What did you say? “I answered, ‘Well, that’s not great. 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 considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I fear going under. They lead you. In urgent cases you roll down in a bed, but now I just marched with a hospital gown and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, she notes, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the surgery. “Cancer is awful, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I underwent removal recently and my right breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “The nipple was preserved.”
The next operation is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “different sizes. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I felt, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! Ironically I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
She is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so positive because she’s used to health crises. They have often coincided with peak moments, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Take a seat.’ From a young age, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; a serious or unusual issue has affected my well-being.”
She recalls to her childhood, already making her debut starring in the stage in a musical (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I rehearsed between visits on an IV drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has become part of the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was planning to release songs in 2020 I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Wow, I say, wait, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
