N.S. woman opens up about her decision to die and having a living funeral [Video]

At 39 years old, April Hubbard is trying to change conversations around death, even as she approaches her own.

“I always kind of thought that I would have to end my own life at some point in some way, even before MAID (medical assistance in dying) was legalized in Canada,” she says. “But I don’t think anybody expected it to be this soon for me and for me to have such a quick decline suddenly.”

She hasn’t chosen a date, but says she started the application process last year and was approved after more than seven months. She expects she may carry out the decision in the next few months.

When she was 17, Hubbard was diagnosed with tethered cord syndrome, a condition in which the spinal cord becomes attached to the tissue surrounding the spinal column. Physicians discovered she had two growths at the base of her spine that …