Listeners speak up about death and end of life care

When we dared to talk about death 2 weeks ago, we were overwhelmed with heartfelt emails, full of personal stories and powerful insights. We realized we needed to revisit this topic by sharing with everyone what individual listeners were sharing with us. Today we continue our conversation we started last month on end of life care.

Two weeks ago, we dedicated a full hour of this program to issues around end of life care. A prominent U.S. doctor wants the medical community to change the way it approaches death and dying.

It's hard to talk about dying when someone's in the middle of life- Anna Craig

Atul Gawande thinks doctors focus too much on extending life with the terminally ill and he believes the priority should be on the quality of life's last days ... not the quantity. We also heard from a number of professionals involved in palliative care issues on why they think Canadians avoid discussions about life's final hours.

Those interviews brought a flood of reaction. So we've decided to follow up. Our producer Liz Hoath joined Anna Maria from Vancouver to share some of the personal stories and comments sent to us.