‘He returned from the brink’: The comedy legend was in eight days in a coma during the pandemic.
Chevy Chase suffered a “potentially fatal” heart failure that caused him being put into an medically induced coma in 2021, per details from a new documentary project about the entertainment icon.
Featured in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the legend of movies such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who hosted the Oscars on two occasions, spent a total of five full weeks in the medical facility.
“He wasn't right, and he was unable to describe to me what was wrong. So, we went to the ER. His heart gave out. During those years he was drinking, he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy; when the heart muscles get weaker, and they are unable to pump as much blood through the body with each beat.”
Physicians subsequently induced him into a state of unconsciousness for over a week, before advising his child, Caley: “His return is uncertain. We don’t know how aware he’ll be. You must prepare for the worst.”
“Upon waking, all he could do was use his voice,” she continued. “He has practically returned from the dead.”
The actor personally has revealed that he has suffered memory problems since his hospitalisation, and in the documentary he cannot remember some of his past professional and personal controversies, including a physical altercation with fellow comedian Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live backstage area.
He expressed he was “disappointed” by his omission from the milestone special of SNL this year, at which he was in the crowd but not on stage.
“Well, it was kind of upsetting actually,” he said. “I haven't spoken about this until now. But I thought that I could have been on the stage too with all the other actors. When co-stars Garrett and Laraine Newman went on the stage, I was curious as to why I wasn't. There was no invitation. Why was I left aside?”
Chase, 82, came close to death in 1980 when he was shocked by electricity on the set of Modern Problems, an incident which precipitated a period of depression.
