‘He has come back from the dead’: The comedy legend endured eight days in a medically induced coma during the pandemic.
Chevy Chase experienced a “near fatal” cardiac event that resulted in him being put into an medically induced coma during the pandemic, according to a recent documentary about the American actor and comedian.
The film, titled I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the star of movies such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who emceed the Oscars twice, spent a total of five full weeks in the medical facility.
“There was a problem, and he was unable to describe to me what was wrong. So, we go 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 are unable to pump as much blood out with each beat.”
Doctors then placed him into a state of unconsciousness for more than a week, before cautioning his child, Caley: “We might not get him back. We don’t know how present he’ll be. Prepare yourselves for the worst.”
“Upon waking, all he could do was use his voice,” she stated further. “He has practically been resurrected.”
He himself has revealed that he has dealt with memory problems since his medical ordeal, and in the project he cannot remember some of his past professional and personal disputes, including a physical altercation with fellow comedian Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live backstage area.
Chase said he was “disappointed” by his omission from the 50th-anniversary show of SNL this year, at which he was in attendance but not on stage.
“To be frank, it was disappointing,” 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 co-stars Garrett and Laraine Newman were called up, I was puzzled as to why I was not. There was no invitation. Why was I left aside?”
Now 82, Chase, almost died in 1980 when he was shocked by electricity on the set of Modern Problems, an accident which precipitated a period of clinical depression.
