‘He returned from the brink’: The comedy legend was in eight days in a medically induced coma during the health crisis.
The famed comedian endured a “potentially fatal” heart failure that caused him being put into an induced coma amid the global health crisis, per details from a new film about the American actor and comedian.
As documented in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the legend of movies such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who hosted the Oscars twice, remained in care for 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 stops. 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 out with each beat.”
Medical professionals then put him into a coma for more than a week, before advising his daughter, his daughter: “He may not recover. We don’t know how aware he’ll be. You must prepare for the worst.”
“After regaining consciousness, all he could do was use his vocal cords,” she stated further. “He has basically come back from the dead.”
The actor personally has revealed that he has dealt with memory problems since his hospital stay, 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 backstage area.
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 on stage.
“To be frank, it was disappointing,” he said. “I haven't spoken about this until now. But I expected that I should have been on the stage too with all the other actors. When co-stars Garrett Morris and Laraine Newman went on the stage, I was wondering as to why I wasn't. No one asked me to. Why was I overlooked?”
The 82-year-old, came close to death in 1980 when he was shocked by electricity on the set of Modern Problems, an incident which precipitated a period of severe depression.
