Christa Pike's health status: Woman who survived execution attempt ‘has pneumonia and no function in her arms’

Christa Pike has a “long road to recovery” after Tennessee’s failed execution attempt that left her unconscious and on life support for six days, her lawyer, Randy Spivey, said at a news conference Wednesday.

In a miraculous development, Pike, 50, awoke and started speaking on Tuesday, but she is far from out of the woods, NBC News reported.

Spivey described several medical issues, including a blood clot in one arm, pneumonia, the inability to swallow and no function in her arms.

“Neither we nor Christa have even begun to process what this means for her mental health,” Spivey said.

According to the Associated Press, Pike suffered burns and blisters to her arms and her prognosis remains uncertain after executioners tried to give her two lethal doses of pentobarbital, her legal team said Wednesday.

Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer. She is the only person to survive after receiving lethal injection drugs during an execution, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Many details of the execution process remain secretive, and Tennessee officials say they are investigating what went wrong.

Christa Pike survived 2 doses of an execution drug. How is that possible?

Medical experts raised a few possibilities that could explain how Pike was able to survive, including the potential drug quality and the placement of IV lines.

Tennessee's executioners had difficulties earlier this year with IV lines for another execution, leading to it being called off.

Only a small amount of the drug may have entered her bloodstream

The 5-gram dose of pentobarbital used in executions is many more times the amount that should put someone in a medical coma, Dr. Jonathan I. Groner, a retired pediatric general surgeon at Ohio State University College of Medicine who has studied lethal injections, told AP.

“The fact that she woke, on one hand, says she got really little of it into her system. So that’s kind of shocking,” Groner was quoted as saying. He added, “It says how badly they botched the execution.”

At high doses, the potent barbiturate should make a person lose consciousness and stop breathing.

Groner said the IV might have been placed improperly, or Pike's veins could have been fragile and ruptured, causing the drug to seep into the surrounding tissue instead of flowing through the bloodstream.

Pike's attorneys have said she was poked with needles at least seven times in the state’s death chamber and that she has a blood disorder that makes it tough to get needles into her veins.

Sourcing of drugs for executions is shrouded in secrecy.

Another possible problem could be the drug quality, said Michaela Almgren, a South Carolina pharmacist and educator who has consulted on several lethal injection cases.

Tennessee does not disclose its drug supplier and has not said where Pike’s supply came from. Almgren said that makes it difficult to track if a drug was prepared, tested, handled and administered properly.

That also means the public may never know exactly what happened in Pike’s case.

Outgoing Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has paused executions and ordered a “comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.” It's unclear whether the state will try executing Pike again.