Inside Chevy Chase’s 8-Day Coma After Heart Failure

Chevy Chase has a new CNN documentary dropping on New Year’s Day, and the headline-grabber is not about SNL feuds. It’s the part where doctors put him into a coma for roughly eight days after a heart failure scare during the pandemic. He’s 82 now, and the doc spells out just how close things got.

The scare, laid out

In the film, Chase’s family and friends walk through a rough timeline that hadn’t been public before. We’d heard he spent five weeks in the hospital with heart issues; now we know why.

• During the pandemic years, something felt off. He couldn’t explain what, so his wife Jayni took him to the ER.
• Once they got there, his heart stopped.
• Doctors decided to put him into a coma for about eight days — a brutal but controlled move meant to stabilize him, according to longtime friend Peter Aaron.
• There was a real chance he wouldn’t make it, and even if he did, no one knew how present he’d be.
• He eventually woke up. At first, all he could really do was speak — and yes, the old reflexes were still there. When a nurse had to reposition some equipment, he quipped, 'That’s what she said.'
• Altogether, he spent around five weeks in the hospital.

'We might not get him back. We don’t know how present he’ll be. Prepare yourselves for the worst.'

How it got that bad

Jayni connects the dots to his drinking years, saying it led to cardiomyopathy — basically a weakened heart muscle that can’t pump efficiently. The Mayo Clinic describes cardiomyopathy as a long-term heart muscle disease that can progress to heart failure and other serious problems. Not the kind of thing that sneaks up without consequences.

What changed afterward

Chase says he’s dealing with memory gaps since the coma. Doctors told him to expect that, and it tracks — he even says it’s made it hard to recall some of his more notorious on-set dustups from his runs on Saturday Night Live and Community. In his words, heart failure is what it is, and he says he’s fine now, but he needs reminders when the memory slips kick in.

The doc itself

The film is called 'I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not,' and it airs January 1 on CNN. It’s a candid watch — part career look-back, part near-miss survival story — and it doesn’t shy away from the messy parts. If you’ve followed his ups and downs over the years, there’s a lot here you probably haven’t heard, including just how close he came to not coming back at all.