Elvis’ Friend ‘Really Blew Up’ at His Doctor After Finding the Musician Collapsed on the Floor
While Elvis Presley was staying with his doctor, he called his friend in the middle of the night with an emergency. When his friend arrived, he found the musician collapsed on the floor, unable to get back up. Though Elvis was in better shape the following day, his friend was still furious. He blew up at Elvis’ doctor for not stepping in to help the musician.
Elvis’ friend was not happy with his doctor
While Elvis’ friend, Jerry Schilling, was visiting him in Las Vegas, he received a call from the musician in the middle of the night.
“He said, ‘Jerry, can you help me?'” Schilling said, per the book Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick. “I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ He said, ‘I’m on the floor and I can’t walk. Nobody’s here.'”
By the time Schilling arrived at the house, Elvis’ girlfriend Linda Thompson was helping him. His doctor, Elias Ghanem, was nowhere to be seen, though. When Ghanem arrived, he insisted that he had no idea what could have caused Elvis’ collapse; he claimed he was treating him with placebos alone.
“I said, ‘Goddamnit, I’m going to tell you something: this man is a proud man. He’s been at your house for weeks, and I have to come pick him up off the floor — and you’re telling me you’re just doing placebos?'” Schilling recalled. “I guess I really blew up at him.”
Elvis wanted his friend to leave his doctor alone
The next day, Schilling came to see Elvis again, who seemed to be in much better health. He also had enough energy to scold Schilling.
“Well, I go out there the next day, and Elvis is out of bed, he’s on the exercise bike, and he is pissed,” Schilling said. “It’s just me and Charlie there, and he knows — he knew I had a temper, not that he was afraid of it, but he just keeps looking at Charlie and saying, ‘Goddamnit, when you f***ing guys get your medical degree, then you can tell my doctors what to do.’ And he — oh, man, he just went on and on. I knew not to say anything. I was just out of bed and on the bicycle and not on the floor.”
Schilling tried to explain to Elvis that he was just looking out for him. He hoped his words would make an impact, but he wasn’t sure they resonated with Elvis.
The musician insisted he knew better about his health than anyone else
Schilling was far from the only person in Elvis’ life who worried about his health. They felt they couldn’t speak to him about it, though. He would scold anyone as he had Schilling, and they risked being tossed out of his entourage. Elvis also insisted that he knew what he was doing.
“I was always concerned about his intake of sleeping pills,” Priscilla Presley wrote in her book Elvis and Me. “His horror of insomnia, compounded with a family history of compulsive worrying, caused him to down three or four Placidyls, Seconals, Quaaludes, or Tuinals almost every night — and often it was a combination of all four. When I expressed my concern, he just picked up the medical dictionary, always near at hand on his night table.”
He insisted that he knew more about what he was taking than anyone else in his life. For this reason, they continued to provide him with medication when he asked for it.
How to get help: In the U.S., contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration helpline at 1-800-662-4357.
