‘He has come back from the dead’: Chevy Chase was in eight days in a coma during the pandemic.
The famed comedian endured a “life-threatening” cardiac event that led to him being put into an medically induced coma amid the global health crisis, according to a new documentary project about the comedy star.
As documented in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the star of movies such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who hosted the Oscars twice, spent a total of five weeks in the hospital.
“There was a problem, 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 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 advising his daughter, his daughter: “We might not get him back. We are unsure how aware he’ll be. Prepare yourselves for the worst.”
“Upon waking, all he could do was use his vocal cords,” she continued. “He has essentially come back from the dead.”
The actor personally has revealed that he has experienced memory problems since his hospitalisation, and in the film he does not recollect some of his past on-set and backstage incidents, including a fistfight with Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live green room.
The comedian noted he was “hurt” by his absence from the milestone special of SNL earlier this year, at which he was in the audience but not on stage.
“To be frank, it was disappointing,” 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 took the stage, I was wondering as to why I was not. I wasn't invited. 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 triggered a period of depression.
