‘He has come back from the dead’: Chevy Chase endured eight days in a coma during the health crisis.
The famed comedian endured a “near fatal” heart failure that caused him being placed in an medically induced coma amid the global health crisis, according to a new film about the entertainment icon.
As documented in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the star of films such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who emceed the Oscars on two occasions, remained in care 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 got 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 over a week, before advising his daughter, his daughter: “He may not recover. We are unsure how aware he’ll be. Prepare yourselves for the worst.”
“After regaining consciousness, all he was able to do was use his voice,” she continued. “He has basically been resurrected.”
The actor personally has revealed that he has dealt with cognitive issues since his medical ordeal, and in the film he cannot remember some of his past professional and personal incidents, including a fistfight with fellow comedian Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live green room.
The comedian noted he was “upset” by his exclusion from the 50th-anniversary show of SNL earlier this year, at which he was in attendance but not featured.
“Honestly, it was quite upsetting,” he said. “I'm only now voicing this. But I assumed that I should have been on the stage too with all the other actors. When co-stars Garrett Morris and Laraine Newman took the stage, I was wondering as to why I was not. I wasn't invited. Why was I left aside?”
Now 82, Chase, nearly lost his life in 1980 when he was shocked by electricity on the set of Modern Problems, an accident which precipitated a period of severe depression.
