Christa Pike was ready to die on Sept. 30. Now the Tennessee death row inmate says the harder task is learning how to keep living after the state's attempt to execute her failed.

Her legal team has released a first-person letter from Pike, her first public words since that night. On the same day her lawyers went to federal court with an emergency request to get her out of isolation.

"My body hurts"

Pike, 50, says the pain has not let up for a single moment in the month since. She remembers waking up days after the procedure by herself in a hospital bed, confused and hurting.

"My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak," she writes.

She says the damage runs deeper than her injuries. Pike admits she never pictured a future past her execution date. She is still trying to understand what it all means.

Pike also turns to the family of Colleen Slemmer, the 19-year-old she was convicted of killing in 1995. She says she is "deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position" and that she keeps thinking about what Slemmer's relatives have lost.

"I don't know why I survived that night. I don't know what comes next," she writes. "Some days, finding hope is harder than others."

She thanks the first responders and medical workers who treated her along with the people who have backed her. Pike says she is gaining strength little by little. "I am holding onto the love and kindness of so many people who have reminded me that I am not alone," she adds.

Back in isolation

Pike says she has spent almost all of her time alone in the prison's medical unit since leaving the hospital. She says it brings back her 28 years of solitary confinement.

On Friday her attorneys filed an emergency motion arguing that prison officials are breaking a 2024 settlement that was meant to end that isolation for good. Under the deal Pike was allowed to work, share meals, exercise and spend time with other women in custody. Her lawyers say all of that has been taken away.

The filing says officials will not tell her when she can be around other inmates again. In a sworn statement Pike says every day alone makes her condition worse.

She also complains about where she is being kept. She says she has been made to clean a shower crawling with roaches by herself. She is doing it with burns, nerve injuries and open wounds she blames on the failed execution.

Her legal team of Hannah Webber, Brian Roark and Angie Bergman says it warned the state again and again before asking the court to step in. Pike wants to be placed with other women who are getting medical care so she can heal without being completely cut off. Her team is also asking the judge to move quickly and proposes that the state respond by Nov. 4.

How she got here

Prison staff gave Pike two doses of the drug pentobarbital during the Sept. 30 execution attempt but she kept breathing. Afterward she needed a breathing machine for days plus over a week of intensive care as doctors fought pneumonia and a blood clot. Her lawyers have claimed the drugs leaked into the tissue around her IV lines.

She went back to prison in early October and remains on death row. Gov. Bill Lee paused the rest of the state's executions for the year and ordered an independent review. He has said he expects her death sentence to stand unless a court rules otherwise.