What led Catherine Tekakwitha to her death

In 1680, we read of her illness: “Although others say when her companion was sent with some other Native girls over the ice to Laprairie to bring something, which Catherine had accompanied her companion and caught a fever. That from this time, which she was never well –Father Chauchetière (1680)

“The fever had made all this worse, which finally obliging her to have kept on her mat and at the end of two months that it took her from us. The last two months of her life, which she had endured extraordinary sufferings. She was obliged to hold herself in the same position the entire day and night, which when she would move that she did with extreme pain.” –Father Cholenec (1680)

Then, Father Chauchetière writes on the day of her death: “Her respiration had diminished always from about nine to ten hours before her death, which then had become insensibly imperceptive, but her face had not changed. Then having difficulty speaking without being able to raise her voice and seeing her companion with tears, which Catherine had said the last parting salutation to her companion. After these last words, which this blessed girl had lost her word when phlegm1 began to fall and would later take her away.”

¹ Pneumonia is an inflammation of the tissue in the lungs. The complications of pneumonia are: fever, shortness of breath, headache, vomiting may also occur, cough with phlegm (a mucous secretion released from the glands in the bronchi, and the cells lining the sinus and nose), and severe abdominal pain may accompany with pneumonia that occurs in the lower lobes. If pneumonia is not treated that a healthy person may recover, or death may occur with an expectancy varying greatly.