After the fears, it is time for cautious optimism, or at least hope. It is too soon to breathe with relief, but the condition of Silvio Berlusconi, who has been admitted to intensive care at the San Rafael hospital since Wednesday, is improving slightly. The diagnosis of chronic leukemia, discovered more than a year ago, is not surprising given his 86 years of age.
The former prime minister is already receiving chemotherapy to slow the growth of his skyrocketing white blood cells. They do it with a pill that doesn’t have too many side effects. The strong back pain that the leader of Forza Italia has been suffering lately is one of the consequences of the disease.
Last March he was also hospitalized at the same medical center due to the disease. And it is that this type of leukemia can lead to different inflammatory processes. The pneumonia he suffers from now is one of them, but they are already giving him an antibiotic that could soon take effect.
The other concern is his kidney failure, which now appears to be under control. Those who are well acquainted with the state of health of the former prime minister want to believe that this time the founder of Fininvest and Mediaset will overcome adversity, as has happened in the past. But at the same time, they are aware that they should not be excessively optimistic. Caution is the word that those closest to him repeat.
Leukemia, even if it is chronic, turns Berlusconi, like other patients, into an immunocompromised subject. And that means that any minimal complication can cause the clinical picture to change from one moment to the next. However, the improvement in his condition is described as encouraging.
Silvio Berlusconi continues in intensive care and it is impossible at the moment to make forecasts about how long he will have to stay there. He is in pavilion Q, on floor-1 of the hospital, in a box isolated from the passage of the relatives of other patients. Along with his trusted doctor, Alberto Zangrillo, head of Anesthesia and Resuscitation, Fabio Ciceri, head of Hematology, Bone Marrow Transplantation and Oncohematology, has also been at the hospital since yesterday.
In recent weeks, the former prime minister has undergone Pet scans and bone marrow sampling, the usual tests for a leukemia diagnosis. Yesterday there were various moments of alarm. And it is that Berlusconi’s life seems to hang by a thread.
Your children’s attitude is key right now. On the first day of their hospitalization, April 5, they came one after another to the hospital to visit their father. That was the first sign that this time it was not about the routine controls to which Berlusconi has accustomed us. And yesterday, his coming and going to the same medical center were interpreted as proof of the worsening condition of the leader of Forza Italia. Suppositions that were later denied by reality, since Berlusconi’s doctors did not describe the Italian’s state of health as dramatic in the medical report.
Silvio Berlusconi has surprised many times with his recovery capacity. It was in June 2016 when, after an open-heart operation for a disease caused by aortic insufficiency, his doctor declared that he “was at risk of dying, he was really in a serious, worrying state and was aware of it” . And after catching the Covid in September 2020, it was Berlusconi himself who admitted: “Thank God and the professionalism of the doctors, I have passed what I consider the most dangerous test of my life.”
No one can know if this time it will be the same. What is certain is that the family takes comfort in the fact that Berlusconi is reacting well to treatment and that this type of leukemia is treatable. His brother Paolo explained it when leaving the hospital: “He is resting. We are more relieved, there is an improvement. We know that he is receiving the best possible treatment, so we are calm.”
According to the criteria of The Trust Project