‘He returned from the brink’: The comedy legend endured eight days in a coma during the health crisis.
Chevy Chase experienced a “potentially fatal” heart failure that led to him being put into an medically induced coma in 2021, according to a recent documentary about the American actor and comedian.
Featured in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the star of movies such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who hosted the Oscars on two occasions, remained in care for five weeks in the medical facility.
“There was a problem, and he was unable to describe to me what was wrong. So, we went to the ER. His heart stops. During those years he was drinking, he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy; which is when the heart muscles get weaker, and they can’t pump as much blood through the body with each beat.”
Physicians subsequently induced him into a state of unconsciousness for eight days, before advising his child, Caley: “We might not get him back. We are unsure how present he’ll be. Get ready for the worst.”
“After regaining consciousness, all he could do was use his voice,” she stated further. “He has essentially been resurrected.”
The actor personally has said that he has dealt with recall difficulties since his medical ordeal, and in the film he does not recollect some of his past professional and personal controversies, including a fight with Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live backstage area.
He expressed he was “hurt” by his exclusion from the milestone special of SNL this year, at which he was in attendance but not on stage.
“Well, it was kind of upsetting actually,” he said. “I'm only now voicing this. But I assumed that I could have been on the stage too with all the other actors. When former castmates Garrett Morris and Laraine took the stage, I was curious as to why I wasn't. There was no invitation. Why was I left aside?”
Chase, 82, nearly lost his life in 1980 when he was subjected to an electrical shock on the set of Modern Problems, an accident which precipitated a period of clinical depression.
