SIDNEY — Monday was a good day for Maj. Gregg Sanborn of the Maine Warden Service.
It was an off-week for the chemotherapy regimen that’s kept his rare form of cancer at bay, and colleagues and their relatives were putting a new roof on his house.
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He was outside walking around and admiring their work.
“It’s been an interesting year,” Sanborn said. “My colleagues and other people saw that I was in need of some help doing a roof.”
Sanborn, 46, had planned to do the work himself; but the battle against cutaneous T-cell lymphoma — a rare form of skin cancer that causes tumors and infections — and the search for a matching stem cell donor got in his way.
“I’d never heard of it and nobody in my family had heard of it,” he said.
He’s working with a team of doctors at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and at the Harold Alfond Center for Cancer Care in Augusta, all of whom have been incredible, he said.
Right now, he said, the treatment is in “kind of in maintenance mode until we get word for sure we’ve got a stem cell donor.”
Sanborn is pinning his hopes on finding that donor because lots of volunteers have come forward to be tested.
“One thing about me being a game warden is I’ve lived all over the state and friends and (have) acquaintances all over,” he said. “People are coming out of the woodwork trying to help me, and we’re getting more people on the registry to help me and help others in the same predicament.”
Late Sunday afternoon, heeding a forecast of dry weather, the amateur roofers arrived and stripped off the old shingles.
The truckload of new shingles arrived Monday morning. About 25 of his colleagues and friends simply “saw a need and acted” to help him, Sanborn said. Volunteers stripped, wrapped and shingled 2,700 square feet on the home.
“It’s pretty overwhelming, actually,” Sanborn said. “People a lot more talented than me are up on the roof right now.”
Sanborn has been a warden for 23 years, and the Sanborns have lived in their Quaker Road home since 2004.
He still holds his full-time job in Augusta, taking time off only for doctor appointments and treatment.
“I’ve been able to keep going,” he said. “When I’ve been working on Warden Service business, I’m not thinking about what is facing me. It’s somewhat therapeutic not thinking about cancer 24-7.”
He and his wife, Deborah, have another good day in store Saturday, when their son graduates from the University of Maine, then runs with the track team. “He’s done well,” Sanborn said.
Betty Adams — 621-5631
badams@centralmaine.com
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