‘He returned from the brink’: The comedy legend spent eight days in a medically induced coma during the pandemic.

The famed comedian suffered a “life-threatening” cardiac event that resulted in him being put into an induced coma during the pandemic, per details from a recent documentary about the entertainment icon.

Featured in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the legend of films 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.

“Something was wrong, and he was unable to describe to me what was wrong. So, we went to the ER. His heart gave out. During those years he was drinking, he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy; which is when the heart muscles get weaker, and they can’t pump as much blood out with each beat.”

Physicians subsequently induced him into a state of unconsciousness for eight days, before advising his child, Caley: “He may not recover. We don’t know how aware he’ll be. Prepare yourselves for the worst.”

“Upon waking, all he was able to do was use his voice,” she continued. “He has basically returned from the dead.”

He himself has revealed that he has suffered cognitive issues since his hospitalisation, and in the project he fails to recall some of his past on-set and backstage disputes, including a fight with fellow comedian Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live backstage area.

Chase said he was “hurt” by his absence from the 50th anniversary special of SNL this year, at which he was in attendance 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 would’ve been on the stage too with all the other actors. When former castmates Garrett Morris and Laraine Newman went on the stage, I was puzzled as to why I wasn't. No one asked me to. Why was I overlooked?”

Chase, 82, came close to death in 1980 when he was shocked by electricity on the set of Modern Problems, an incident which triggered a period of severe depression.