Chevy Chase Was Put Into a Coma for 8 Days After Heart Failure

Chevy Chase was placed in a coma for about eight days back in 2021 after going into heart failure, a new documentary reveals.

The 82-year-old comedian and his loved ones reflect on the health scare in CNN’s new documentary, I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, premiering Jan. 1.

“[He] has basically come back from the dead. He had heart failure,” Chevy’s daughter, Caley Chase, said in the documentary, as per Variety.

“Something was wrong, and he couldn’t explain to me what was wrong. So, we go to the ER. His heart stops,” the actor’s wife, Jayni Chase, recalled. “During those years he was drinking, he got cardiomyopathy; when the heart muscles get weaker, and they can’t pump as much blood out with each beat.”

Chevy’s longtime friend, Peter Aaron, revealed that doctors decided to “put him into a coma for maybe eight days” in order to revive him, but that it was “pretty rough on the body.”

“The doctor had warned us: ‘We might not get him back,’” Aaron recalled. “We don’t know how present he’ll be. Prepare yourselves for the worst.’”

After waking up from the coma, it took Chevy a bit to “reorient himself” and get his “head back together,” which was aided by playing cards and chess. “I feel like his memory gaps come from that incident,” said Aaron.

Indeed, Chevy agreed that he’s suffered memory loss since the incident, and that he does not remember disputes from his time on both Community and Saturday Night Live.

“According to the doctors, my memory would be shot from it. That’s what’s happened here,” he admitted, adding, “Heart failure is what it is. I’m fine now. It’s just that it affects your memory, the doctors have told me that. So, I have to be reminded of things.”

Elsewhere in the documentary, the Caddyshack star said he was “hurt” by his exclusion in the 50th anniversary special for SNL. “It was kind of upsetting, actually,” he admitted. “This is probably the first time I’m saying it. But I expected that I would’ve been on the stage too with all the other actors. When Garrett [Morris] and Laraine [Newman] went on the stage there, I was curious as to why I didn’t. No one asked me to. Why was I left aside?”

“I did bring it up once in a text to Lorne [Michaels] and then took it back,” he added. “I said, ‘Okay, I take it back, silly.’ But it’s not that silly. Somebody’s made a bad mistake there. I don’t know who it was, but somebody made a mistake. They should’ve had me on that stage. It hurt.”

I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not premieres Jan. 1 at 8 p.m. ET on CNN.