Christa Pike claims she feels constant pain after surviving two lethal injections

American inmate Christa Pike stated this Friday that she feels constant pain, both physical and mental, after surviving two lethal injections on September 30 in the state of Tennessee (USA).

“There hasn’t been a single moment since that night when I haven’t felt pain. My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. It is still hard for me to speak,” Pike expressed in his first statement after the events, transcribed by his lawyers and reported by the American press.

“Pain is not just physical. I feel pain in my mind and in my soul,” he explained.

Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder, a year earlier, of her fellow student Colleen Slemmer, and was going to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

After surviving the two lethal injections she was administered, she was taken to a hospital, where she spent several days unconscious and developed pneumonia.

Additionally, he had a blood clot in his arm.

“I hold on to love”

Pike stated in the statement that he is recovering and becoming “stronger and stronger,” but noted that “recovering is not the same as being well.”

Furthermore, she explained that on the day her execution was scheduled, she was prepared to die and that “she had not thought about life beyond that night.”

“I am looking for meaning in what happened to me. (…) I don’t know why I survived that night or what will come next. Some days it is harder for me to find hope than others,” he/she indicated.

For now, she said, she is trying to recover: “I am holding on to the love and kindness of so many people who have reminded me that I am not alone.”

Pike also assured that he continues to “think about my victim’s family and the terrible pain and loss they have suffered.”

Tennessee has executed 17 inmates since the reinstatement of capital punishment in the United States in 1977, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center, an organization that collects statistics on these sentences across the country.

Currently, 42 people are on death row in Tennessee.