Chevy Chase (centre) suffers from cardiomyopathy, a chronic disease which affects how the heart pumps blood through the body and can lead to heart failure or warrant a transplant. Photo: AP
A new documentary reveals Chevy Chase spent over a week in a medically induced coma during his five-week hospital stay in 2021 amid near-fatal heart failure.
The gravity of the 82-year-old Emmy winner’s health is revealed in I’m Chevy Chase And You’re Not, premiering New Year’s Day on CNN.
Chase suffers from cardiomyopathy, a chronic disease which affects how the heart pumps blood through the body and can lead to heart failure or warrant a transplant. He developed the condition as a result of all “those years he was drinking,” his wife, Jayni, says in the doc, according to Variety.
“Something was wrong, and he couldn’t explain to me what was wrong. So, we go to the ER. His heart stops,” recalls Jayni, with whom the comedian shares daughters Cydney, 42; Caley, 40; and Emily, 37.
Also appearing in the documentary is Chase’s longtime friend Peter Aaron, who says that doctors ultimately “decided to put him into a coma for maybe eight days.”
Caley recounts the scary incident, with doctors warning the family, “We might not get him back. We don’t know how present he’ll be. Prepare yourselves for the worst.”
Describing the seriousness of her father’s heart failure, Caley says he “basically [came] back from the dead,” though “all he could do was use his voice” when he first woke up. Thankfully, his personality remained intact — as evidenced by a “That’s what she said” joke Caley remembers him making to a nurse — though the Saturday Night Live alum admits his memory is a different story.
“According to the doctors, my memory would be shot from it. That’s what happened here,” Chase says. He adds that while he’s physically “fine now,” the health crisis has continued to affect his memory, so he needs to be “reminded of things.”
Confrontations from his time on SNL and Community are among those lost recollections, Chase reportedly says in the film.
While this is the first time Chase and his family have openly spoken about the coma, he joked to CBS Sunday Morning in 2022 that his heart had been “removed” during his five-week hospital stint, saying he didn’t “give a crap” what roles there were for him, he “just want[ed] to work again.” – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
