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When James McKinlay was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer this summer, the 68-year-old avid cyclist and kayaker accepted the devastating news with characteristic calm.

“We are all going to go sometime, just some of us are going to go sooner than others,” he told his wife, Mary.

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But the final days before his death on Sept. 15 were anything but calm. And Mary McKinlay wants answers about why palliative care physicians at Bruyère Continuing Care didn’t do more to relieve her husband’s suffering.

“It broke my heart, because you wouldn’t let a dog suffer like that, and here we had to let my sweetheart suffer like that. It was totally uncalled for,” she said in an interview at the couple’s Ottawa apartment. “It was like a nightmare that never ended.”

His final days were marked by pain and agitated delirium. He often thrashed in bed, pulling at his clothes and trying to remove his catheter, said McKinlay. He died on Sept. 15.