The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has projected that 1.9 million people in the United States and 18 million around the world will be diagnosed with cancer in 2020.

In small town family practices and big city hospitals all across America and around the world, doctors will give these patients the news that they have cancer and tell them to go home and get their affairs in order before starting treatment.

When somebody is told they have cancer, it hits them like a body blow. Theres fear. Its real. Its raw. After the initial shock and terror of being diagnosed with cancer, these folks will leave the doctors office in a daze and go home.

There will be scary, sleepless nights. Floors will be paced. There will be emotional phone calls where words cannot even begin to describe the hurt on the other end of the line as the cancer diagnosis is shared with a parent or a sibling or a child.

On top of being sick, theres financial stress. Anxious conversations around the kitchen table about money. What happens with work? The mortgage still has to be paid. Bills start pile up as the first insurance co-pays come due. There are questions about a living will and life insurance.

Friends and relatives will flood social media with messages of thoughts and prayers and fill up mailboxes with cards. There will be flowers from loved ones. But in the middle of the night, alone with their thoughts, the silence will be deafening.

The day will finally come when the person checks into a cancer center, puts on a hospital gown and officially becomes a patient. In almost all cases they start receiving some form of chemotherapy or radiation. Many times the treatment will be worse than the actual disease, ultimately proving to be a therapeutic failure.

A cancer patient can push the call button and the nurse will bring medication for nausea or diarrhea or other common side effects of treatment. Pain pills and depression meds may be prescribed. A social worker or chaplain might be summoned.

The problem is theres no magic pill to inspire courage. Nothing can be prescribed to power the patient forward to face another challenging day of treatment. This is the ultimate battle for survival. To live they must will themselves forward. The fight is not just physical. The fight is mental. Its all mindset.

How do I know so much about cancer at age 13? My perspective is personal. My dad was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in 2012. For half my life, Ive watched him battle this dreadful, deadly disease as it relapsed after his initial treatment, and then relapsed a second time.

After riding an emotional rollercoaster of devastating lows and euphoric highs that spanned five years and 11 rounds of intensive chemotherapy, the experience ultimately culminated with my father beating the disease after undergoing a high-risk stem cell transplant at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

I remember asking my dad during an especially tough round of chemotherapy that just crushed him, How can you suffer this much and still be so strong? Ill never forget his answer: Floyd, there may come a time in your life when the only one left who believes in you is you. In those times, you have to will yourself forward. You have to be relentless.

The message was so powerful I remember getting goose bumps at the time. I was so moved by my dads relentless mindset and how it helped him to battle cancer that I wanted to share it to help others. On the anniversary of my dads successful transplant, I started the Relentless Pledge, a nonprofit organization.

Working with hospital administrators and oncology nurses in South Dakota, North Dakota and all across America, were working to give each cancer patient a relentless wristband to inspire hope and courage. In that moment, the patient knows they are not alone in the fight against cancer. They know you and I and a million other Americans have their back.

For more information, and to take the pledge to be relentless in your own life and support the mission of the Relentless Pledge organization on World Cancer Day, which is today, you can visit our website at relentlesspledge.org online.

Floyd Korzan, 13, of Mitchell, started the Relentless Pledge organization, which aims to give each cancer patient in South Dakota and across the nation a relentless wristband to inspire hope and courage. For more information, visit relentlesspledge.org. This column is being run on World Cancer Day.

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