Slow down? You’ll make more progress with Ricky Rolfe if your advice is to make a living knocking on doors and selling air fresheners, or if you suggest switching his hobby to stamp collecting.

Diagnosed with cancer in March, was racing at Oxford Plains Speedway in May and winning there in June.

All this while working a full schedule, building the competition’s cars at Race Basics in Andover. And while shuttling to-and-fro Stephens Memorial Hospital in Norway for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday chemotherapy sessions, every other week.

“My doctors, none of them know anything about racing,” Rolfe said. “I’m able to kind of buffalo ’em on that. ‘Nope, there’s nothing stressful about it.’ They just told me my body would let me know, and they were right.”

Rolfe had one of those red alerts Wednesday, when an apparent allergic reaction required an overnight stay in the hospital.

“They don’t know if it’s the chemo or something I ate,” he said. “I have hives all over. My feet are swollen. My hands are swollen.”

The long-term prognosis for Rolfe, 46, is good.

Doctors discovered a tumor during a colonoscopy. Rolfe underwent surgery to remove one-third of his colon and several lymph nodes.

Only one of the lymph nodes showed signs of cancer, a good indication that the disease spread only minimally.

“The chemo is a back-up. It makes my odds better of leaving a normal life span and not having the cancer come back again,” Rolfe said. “I don’t want to say it’s funny, but it’s a coincidence: My father found out he had the same thing a month before.”

In the short-term, work and play have been a haven and an important part of Rolfe’s recovery.

Two weeks ago, Rolfe shadowed Eddie MacDonald across the finish line, running second in an 150-lap American-Canadian Tour event at his home track.

Rolfe went one better last Saturday, carrying the checkered flag at the end of the 40-lap Late Model feature for the first time since his diagnosis.

The week in between was a treatment cycle.

“Wednesday to Friday after the chemo is pretty rough. It just means the boys at the shop have to work a little harder to make up for me,” Rolfe said. “I can’t eat much those days because my stomach is upset. I start feeling pretty good by Saturday. I never eat much on race days anyway, because I’m too nervous.”

Early-season races were a struggle, but Rolfe ascribes that to his work commitments and perfectionist tendencies rather than his illness.

Rolfe regularly tests different chassis set-ups in his No. 51 machines, reporting his findings back to business partners Mitch Green and Dave Smith for the benefit of their customers.

Also, with two Oxford championships and 35 feature victories in six different divisions, Rolfe can rest in the knowledge that he has accomplished almost everything on his list of career goals.

The missing piece is a TD Bank 250 win. Rolfe was runner-up to Ben Rowe in 2004.

“We’re definitely happy with that (touring) car, the blue car, the one Mark Brackett owns,” Rolfe said. “We took that same set-up and put it into the white car for Saturday night, the one I own. It seems to be the hot set-up right now.

“You have to do something different from everybody else. We started the season trying a lot of different set-ups. We had to go back to the drawing board.”

Keeping up with MacDonald two weeks ago gave Rolfe the confidence that his body could handle the rigors of a mid-summer marathon.

Now his attention turns to unseating MacDonald as champion of the richest short track race in the region on July 18.

“I always look forward to that race, but after the last two weeks I’m really looking forward to it,” Rolfe said. “We weren’t running that good. Now after the ACT race I’d say we’re one of the top three cars to beat.”

Slow down? Not that weekend. Not anytime soon. Unless …

“If we win the 250,” he said, “we might take a week off. But I’m not planning on it.”

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The Rolfe file

Career highlights: 2002 OPS Late Model champion; 2003 OPS Pro Stock champion

Wins: 36, in six different divisions from 1987 to 2010

Crew members: Mark Brackett, Dave Lebroke, Ryan Lebroke, Matt Rolfe, Jeff Meservier, Lonney Swett, Chuck Heckbert.