‘He was brought back from the edge’: Chevy Chase spent eight days in a medically induced coma during Covid pandemic.
The famed comedian suffered a “potentially fatal” heart failure that resulted in him being put into an induced coma amid the global health crisis, as revealed in a recent documentary about the comedy star.
As documented in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the star of films such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who hosted the Oscars on two occasions, remained in care for five full weeks in the medical facility.
“There was a problem, and he was unable to describe to me what was wrong. So, we headed to the ER. His heart stops. During those years he was drinking, he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy; when the heart muscles get weaker, and they can’t pump as much blood out with each beat.”
Doctors then placed him into a state of unconsciousness for eight days, before warning his daughter, his daughter: “His return is uncertain. We don’t know how aware he’ll be. You must prepare for the worst.”
“When he woke up, all he was able to do was use his vocal cords,” she continued. “He has basically come back from the dead.”
He himself has stated that he has experienced recall difficulties since his hospital stay, and in the project he does not recollect some of his past on-set and backstage disputes, including a fistfight with Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live dressing room.
He expressed he was “hurt” by his omission from the milestone special of SNL this year, at which he was in the audience but not featured.
“Well, it was kind of upsetting actually,” he said. “I haven't spoken about this until now. But I assumed that I would’ve been on the stage too with all the other actors. When former castmates Garrett and Laraine went on the stage, I was curious as to why I didn’t. No one asked me to. Why was I excluded?”
Now 82, Chase, nearly lost his life in 1980 when he was subjected to an electrical shock on the set of Modern Problems, an accident which triggered a period of severe depression.
