Kris Carnahan is Beckham County through and through. His family has been around as long as any. His formidable years were spent in the halls of Elk City Public Schools.
Cancer has also been a part of his life from an early age.
At the tender age of nine, he lost his first mother to the deadly disease. Then, through his childhood best friend, he gained his second mother, Cheryl “PK” Overstreet.
Overstreet was an award-winning journalist for the Elk City News. She spent many years chasing down stories, but kept a framed photograph of Carnahan at her desk.
They were family of their own making. Not long after Overstreet died, Carnahan’s young son Liam was diagnosed with pediatric brain cancer.
At the time, Carnahan and his family was splitting their time between Elk City and Arkansas. They have since remained mostly in Arkansas, although Beckham County remains the home they hope to come to.
Young Liam was almost five when his cancer took his life in 2019.
“We really hoped that we would be finished with cancer for a while when we lost Liam,” Carnahan’s wife Denise recounted. “It was so hard and so painful, but losing Liam did bring us so much closer as a family.”
However, Carnahan now is facing his own cancer.
Like his son’s, his cancer is rare and growing.
Also like his son, Carnahan is fighting it with all he has.
The family now just needs a little help to get through.
“We have no income coming in,” Denise said. “Kris had been at the same job since 2014, but he has stage 4 scarnoma. It is kind of a soft tissue blood cancer. For Kris, the tumor is in his pelvis region. We have done chemo, but the scans just showed that it continued to grow. But, we know what this is. We know that this will always be within this body, but we also know that Kris can get many more years if we find the right chemo to stop the growth. He can live like he is now.”
However, the family needs help getting there.
At their Arkansas home, they use wood to heat their home during the winter. Their five acres needs mowed, but their mower needs work.
“Everything we are doing is out of pocket. We don’t get food stamps and a lot of our medical expenses is out of pocket. I had to come up with $3,000 for Kris to have an appointment at MD Anderson — just to hear their opinion on a chemo that might contain this,” Denise explained.
Most likely, Carnahan will next take the chemo treatment known as the “Red Devil.”
His wife said that, while that is terrifying to the couple, they lean on their deceased son for inspiration.
“The other day, Kris said, ‘You are the person God wanted by my side,’” Denise remembered. “This was after we had talked about the treatment that would come next. I thought about it and I told him that we had to think back to all those babies that we watched at Saint Jude’s. These were Liam’s little friends. So many of them had to take this awful ‘Red Devil,’ but we watched them still being happy and seeking life. If those little babies could get through this and be strong, so can we. We just have to look to those memories and remember that we aren’t the only people going through this. Some are actual children. After losing Liam, I never wanted to hear the word cancer again. Never. But, here we are. I can say it is unfair, but that won’t change the reality. I try not to get mad at the situation because I know that won’t change it. Right ow we just need a little help.”
