‘He returned from the brink’: Chevy Chase endured eight days in a medically induced coma during the health crisis.

The famed comedian suffered a “life-threatening” heart failure that led to him being put into an medically induced coma during the pandemic, according to a recent documentary about the entertainment icon.

The film, titled I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the star of movies such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who hosted the Oscars on two occasions, spent a total of five full 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 was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy; when the heart muscles get weaker, and they are unable to pump as much blood out with each beat.”

Physicians subsequently induced him into a coma for eight days, before warning his daughter, Caley: “We might not get him back. We are unsure how cognizant he’ll be. You must prepare for the worst.”

“When he woke up, all he could do was use his voice,” she continued. “He has basically come back from the dead.”

He himself has stated that he has suffered cognitive issues since his hospital stay, and in the film he cannot remember some of his past on-set and backstage incidents, including a fight with Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live backstage area.

Chase said he was “disappointed” by his absence from the 50th anniversary special of SNL this year, at which he was in the audience but not featured.

“Well, it was kind of upsetting actually,” he said. “This is probably the first time I’m saying it. But I thought that I could 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 puzzled as to why I was not. No one asked me to. Why was I left aside?”

Chase, 82, came close to death in 1980 when he was electrocuted on the set of Modern Problems, an accident which led to a period of clinical depression.