‘He was brought back from the edge’: Chevy Chase spent eight days in a coma during Covid pandemic.
The famed comedian endured a “potentially fatal” cardiac event that led to him being placed in an medically induced coma amid the global health crisis, according to a recent documentary about the entertainment icon.
Featured in 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, was hospitalized for five weeks in the medical facility.
“He wasn't right, and he couldn’t explain to me what was wrong. So, we go to the ER. His heart stops. During those years he was drinking, he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy; when the heart muscles get weaker, and they can’t pump as much blood through the body with each beat.”
Physicians subsequently induced him into a state of unconsciousness for more than a week, before cautioning his child, his daughter: “We might not get him back. We don’t know how present he’ll be. Get ready for the worst.”
“After regaining consciousness, all he could do was use his vocal cords,” she stated further. “He has basically returned from the dead.”
He himself has stated that he has dealt with memory problems since his hospitalisation, and in the documentary he does not recollect some of his past professional and personal disputes, including a fight with fellow comedian Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live dressing room.
Chase said he was “disappointed” by his omission from the 50th-anniversary show of SNL recently, at which he was in the crowd but not featured.
“Well, it was kind of upsetting actually,” he said. “I haven't spoken about this until now. But I thought that I would’ve 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 didn’t. There was no invitation. Why was I excluded?”
Chase, 82, nearly lost his life in 1980 when he was electrocuted on the set of Modern Problems, an accident which triggered a period of clinical depression.
