A woman who was the private nurse to the legendary Elvis Presley during the final years of his life is speaking out to reveal what made the music icon so “miserable” before his death.

Letetia Henley Kirk told Closer Weekly that she first met Presley back in 1968, when she treated him for for saddle sores at a clinic in Memphis, Tennessee. She has never forgotten the way the legendary rocker looked down as doctors spoke to him.

“I walked over, lifted his chin, and said, ‘Elvis, if you talk to me, you look at me,’” Kirk recalled.

Presley was so impressed by Kirk and her “country ways” that he soon hired her to be his private nurse. By 1972, Kirk was living at Presley’s Graceland estate with her husband and their daughters.

“Elvis had a way of getting what he wanted,” Kirk explained.

By the time Kirk entered the scene, Presley was already separated from his wife Priscilla, and loneliness was eating away at him.

“He was very family-oriented,” she remembered. “[He and Priscilla] continued to be very close via the telephone. … He wanted a companion, but it was difficult for someone of his stature.”

Kirk could see things were getting bad in the final year of Presley’s life, saying that “it was exhausting … watching him slowly self-destruct.”

Presley tried to find solace in reading the Bible, but his nurse said that there was one thing that made him miserable that he couldn’t get over.

“He was a very spiritual person,” Kirk explained. “The world thinks he has everything, and yet the happiness isn’t there. He was miserable because he’d gained so much weight. He knew he was not going to be able to perform like he wanted to.”

“We shared many hours together,” she added. “I saw the sadness and the happiness. I saw vulnerability. I was very fortunate [to have known him]. I wish there was something I could have done to make him a happier person. He was not only my patient but a good friend.”

Kirk tried to improve Presley’s diet, but nothing seemed to stick. Instead, she discovered that prescription drugs “came from everywhere.”

“His access to medications was overwhelming,” she alleged.

Kirk revealed that she was at work at a medical clinic when she received the news that Presley had died.

“Had he had immediate medical attention, there’s a big possibility [he might have lived],” she said. “But who knows? I just want the world to know what a great, intelligent, kind, spiritual individual he was. He was a very special person.”

Kirk said that when she thinks of Presley, there’s one memory that sticks out in her mind, and it’s when his young daughter Lisa Marie came to visit Graceland as a little girl

“I had a huge painting of Elvis — a velvet painting he had given me,” she said. “She walked past the painting, and she took her little fingers and blew a kiss and said, ‘I love you, daddy.’ I melted right away.”