‘He has come back from the dead’: The comedy legend spent eight days in a coma during the pandemic.
Chevy Chase endured a “near fatal” cardiac event that led to him being placed in an medically induced coma in 2021, per details from a new documentary project about the American actor and comedian.
The film, titled I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the legend of movies such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who hosted the Oscars twice, was hospitalized for five full weeks in the medical facility.
“There was a problem, and he couldn’t explain to me what was wrong. So, we headed to the ER. His heart stopped. 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 out with each beat.”
Medical professionals then put him into a state of unconsciousness for more than a week, before advising his child, Caley: “We might not get him back. We don’t know how aware he’ll be. Prepare yourselves for the worst.”
“When he woke up, all he was able to do was use his voice,” she stated further. “He has essentially been resurrected.”
He himself has revealed that he has suffered memory problems since his hospital stay, and in the documentary he does not recollect some of his past professional and personal incidents, including a fistfight with fellow comedian Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live green room.
He expressed he was “hurt” by his absence from the milestone special of SNL recently, at which he was in attendance but not on stage.
“Well, it was kind of upsetting actually,” he said. “This is probably the first time I’m saying it. But I expected that I should have been on the stage too with all the other actors. When former castmates Garrett and Laraine Newman took the stage, I was curious as to why I didn’t. There was no invitation. Why was I overlooked?”
The 82-year-old, came close to death in 1980 when he was shocked by electricity on the set of Modern Problems, an incident which triggered a period of severe depression.
