The man on the other end of the line doesn't sound at all like he's been handed a death sentence.

Some 16 months after finding out he had Stage 4 cancer, Lyall Woznesensky is back at his job and working full-time on Vancouver Island as the head of HR for a B.C. groceries company.

“Once you get to the fourth stage it's usually terminal,” Woznesensky acknowledged.

If the name sounds familiar, you're probably an older Bomber fan who remembers the tall, homegrown defensive end who played for the Big Blue in the late 1970s.

Born in Saskatchewan but raised in Winnipeg from the time he was two, big Woz – the late, great Cactus Jack Wells had a horrible time pronouncing his name on the radio, as I recall – was the Bombers top rookie in '77.

He turned into one of the more feared defensive ends in the CFL after Winnipeg traded him a year later in one of the real blockbusters in franchise history.

But the fear you put into opposing quarterbacks when you're rolling up as many as 15 sacks in a season is nothing compared to the fear Woznesesnky experienced upon his first diagnosis, in August, 2015.

“You've got melanoma,” he recalled the doctor saying. “And it's not the good kind. It's the bad one.”

What he thought was a minor blood blister on his chest turned out to be evidence of a significant tumour.

“They said it went right down to my bone,” Woznesensky said. “The most scared I was was about telling my wife and kids. That's where I get emotional all the time. It's the most difficult thing in the world.”

Two surgeries, debilitating chemo treatments and five months later, a CAT scan showed another tumour in his chest and three on his liver.

That's when the diagnosis jumped from Stage 3-B to Stage 4.

So what's he still doing talking to a Winnipeg sportswriter nearly a year and a half later?

A clinical trial of immunotherapy seems to have helped.

“It's totally different from chemo,” he said. “Call immunotherapy a football player, call chemo a baseball player. It sort of wakes your immune system up. It'll create some more white blood cells to go fight the cancer. It'll seek it out.”

Not that it's been one smooth path to the quarterback.

Woznesensky's liver and thyroid and heart rate have gone out of whack at different times, forcing him to take steroids.

“I said If I'd known steroids were that good I should have taken them when I played ball,” he cracked.

They say a sense of humour is good medicine, and Woznesensky's is alive and well.

So is his sense of perspective.

The first few trips for treatment saw to that.

“It's an awakening,” he said. “Because you see all these other people and how much younger they are and the pain they're going through, and you don't have half of what they've got.

“Not that I want to go anywhere, but if I did, I've been one of the fortunate people in the world.”

Woznesensky's wife of 29 years has been his rock, his two sons his pride and joy.

Former teammates have also come out of the woodwork.

“There's so many,” he said. “I have about 10, 15 guys just call me on a continuous basis to see how I'm doing after they heard about it.”

He was never teammates with former Bomber player and team president Lyle Bauer, but he recently heard from Bauer, also a cancer survivor.

Hall of Fame kicker Lui Passaglia, a friend and former teammate at Simon Fraser University, is a particular inspiration.

It was at a Grey Cup luncheon in Vancouver, in 2014 – months before Woznesensky was even diagnosed – that he watched Passaglia impact an audience with his story of dealing with colon cancer.

“That was really brave of him,” Woznesensky said. “Because he's really quite a quiet guy.”

Fighting the initial reluctance to have people feel sorry for him, Woznesensky has decided to go public, too.

He's one of four people living with advanced cancers profiled online to mark National Cancer Survivors Day, Sunday.

It might be the most attention he's received since the Bombers traded him to Calgary, along with Merv Walker and Richard Crump, for star D-lineman John Helton.

Not that he wants attention.

But he does want others living with cancer to know it's OK to talk about it, that they're not alone.

Woznesensky finished his clinical trial three weeks ago. He received the results of his last CAT scan, Thursday.

“The doctor said I am as close to cancer free as I can be,” he said. “I am pretty well the luckiest guy in the world, though I don't deserve it.”

He doesn't know his future, but he's more assured than ever about his present.

“Life truly is better now,” he said. “You enjoy every minute more. I'll go home today and just look at my wife and say thank God I'm here and I can just appreciate these moments.”

pfriesen@postmedia.com

Twitter: @friesensunmedia

The Lyall Woznesensky File

Born: April 4, 1953, Melville, SK (age: 64)

Playing height: 6-foot-7

Weight: 240 lbs.

University: Simon Fraser

CFL Career

Year Team GP Sacks*

1977 Winnipeg 16 --

1978 Winnipeg 16 --

1979 Calgary 16 --

1980 Hamilton 16 --

1981 Saskatchewan 16 14

1982 Saskatchewan 12 4

1983 Toronto/Montreal 6 2

1984 Calgary 16 15

*League didn't keep sack stats until '81