‘He was brought back from the edge’: Chevy Chase was in eight days in a coma during the health crisis.
Chevy Chase experienced a “near fatal” cardiac event that resulted in him being put into an medically induced coma amid the global health crisis, according to a new film about the comedy star.
Featured in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the legend 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 hospital.
“Something was wrong, and he couldn’t explain to me what was wrong. So, we went to the ER. His heart stopped. During those years he was drinking, he developed cardiomyopathy; which is when the heart muscles get weaker, and they can’t pump as much blood through the body with each beat.”
Doctors then placed him into a state of unconsciousness for over a week, before advising his child, Caley: “We might not get him back. We are unsure how present he’ll be. Prepare yourselves for the worst.”
“Upon waking, all he was able to do was use his voice,” she continued. “He has essentially been resurrected.”
The actor personally has stated that he has experienced cognitive issues since his medical ordeal, and in the documentary he cannot remember some of his past professional and personal controversies, including a fistfight with Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live dressing room.
The comedian noted he was “upset” by his absence from the 50th-anniversary show of SNL this year, at which he was in the audience but not participating.
“Honestly, it was quite upsetting,” he said. “This is probably the first time I’m saying it. But I thought that I would’ve been on the stage too with all the other actors. When former castmates Garrett Morris and Laraine Newman were called up, I was curious as to why I wasn't. I wasn't invited. Why was I left aside?”
Now 82, Chase, came close to death 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.
