Silvio Berlusconi is getting steadily better after being rushed to hospital last week with a lung infection and a sudden worsening of the chronic leukemia he had kept a secret for the last two years, the hospital said Monday.
Berlusconi is showing "gradual and constant improvement" in his
treatment for the lung infection and leukemia, according to the
latest medical bulletin issued by Milan's San Raffaele Hospital
where the 86-year-old three-time former premier and media tycoon
has been in intensive care since last Wednesday.
"Over the last 48 hours we have seen a progressive and constant
improvement in the functions of the organs being monitored,"
said the bulletin.
The media billionaire, who it recently emerged has been
suffering from leukemia for about two years, was hospitalised
with breathing difficulties due to the lung infection.
The San Raffaele added that it was cautiously optimistic about
Berlusconi's recovery from his latest bout of ill health.
"The cyto-reductive, anti-microbic and anti-inflammatory
therapies are producing the hoped for results, enabling us to
express cautious optimism," said the medical bulletin.
"(Ex) Premier Berlusconi is still in intensive care".
Berlusconi has been described as a "lion" and a "rock" by
relatives as he fights his latest health battle.
He is reportedly asking to go home.
The leukemia or blood cancer Berlusconi is suffering from is not
the most severe type, medical sources said after he was revealed
to be suffering from chronic myelomonocytic leukemia.
Berlusconi had a heart operation in 2016 and has been
hospitalised on several occasions in the last three years for
COVID and subsequently long COVID.
The latest health problem for the flamboyant businessman turned
politician has gained him more headlines in Italy and worldwide.
The centre right Forza Italia (FI) leader is a larger than life
public figure whose fans and detractors split fairly equally on
his business, economic and political accomplishments and his
long history of legal woes including most recently the alleged
bunga bunga sex parties he has always insisted were elegant and
tasteful soirées.
The former cruise ship crooner has been making waves since, as a
young and buccaneering property developer in the swinging
1960-70s in his native Milan, he built a space-age 'Milan 2'.
He used the proceeds from his property portfolio to create
Italy's first and still far biggest commercial TV network with
the help of his close friend, Socialist leader Bettino Craxi,
later to die in exiled disgrace after being laid low by the
Bribesville probes, but never abandoned by his old friend.
Berlusconi made an even bigger splash when as a youthful (57)
and dynamic exemplar of the can-do Milanese businessman he 'took
the political field' by forging FI mostly out of staffers and
going on to triumphantly demolish a post-Communist 'joyous war
machine' touted to take power in 1994.
In that short first term and two subsequent ones in which he
became Italy's longest serving postwar prime minister, he
grasped the nettle of reshaping the Italian economy and
recalcitrant public administration but often said he "was in the
control room but couldn't find the buttons".
All the while he kept the headline writers happy with his snappy
one-liners, gaffes, purges of unsympathetic TV journalists, and
battles against the "red" judges allegedly persecuting him in a
string of legal woes and, increasingly, sex scandals.
The biggest splash on this last front was when he was found
guilty of paying for sex with an underage prostitute and erotic
dancer with the stage name of Ruby Heartstealer, only to be
acquitted after judges found he could not have known she was
just 17.
In all his run-ins with the law, including for allegedly buying
judges and Senators, Berlusconi has only been definitively
convicted once, for tax fraud, but that lone four-year sentence.
later commuted to a year of community service working with the
elderly, earned him a ban from public office that ended with his
election to the European Parlament in 2018 and, last year, with
his triumphant return to the Senate after nine years away.
With his politically base eroded by the years of scandal and the
powerful rise of his one-time sports minister Giorgia Meloni to
become Italy's first woman premier, Berlusconi was reduced to
playing a bit part in the new centre-right coalition spearheaded
by Meloni's rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party.
But he still saw himself as a kingmaker, and could not resist
embarrassing the fiercely pro-Ukraine premier with recent
statements of support for another old friend, Russian President
Valdimir Putin, on whose gifted bed the one-time 'Knight of
Labour' allegedly carried out some of the exploits with escorts
that prosecutors were determined to nail him for.
His evergreen vigour was also shown when he acquired a new,
33-year-old girlfriend, FI MP Marta Fascia, two years ago,
recently quashing reports she would become his third wife after
Carla Elvira Dall'Oglio, whom he married in 1965
and by whom he has two children, both media executives, and
actress Veronica Lario (born Miriam Bartolini), who he was
smitten by after seeing her play topless in a Milan play called
the Magnificent Cuckold, by whom he had another three kids, and
who divorced him in 2009 after accusing him of pursuing young
women.
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