“I’m relaxed because we’re doing our best. Despite a serious illness, the patient is responding well to the therapies,” commented Alberto Zangrillo, personal physician to the 86-year-old Berlusconi, who is in the clinic’s intensive care unit.
The patient is stable and is asking to return home, the clinic said. The media mogul also received a visit from his five children on Saturday. Berlusconi’s condition is better than he had expected, said the former prime minister’s confidant, Gianni Letta, who visited the TV tsar.
Paolo Barelli, the Forza Italia faction leader in the House of Representatives, told La7 television on Saturday that Berlusconi was responding well to the therapies. “It’s very important and gives us hope,” added Barelli. The leader of the governing party Forza Italia was admitted to the hospital’s intensive care unit on Wednesday with a lung infection and the consequences of chronic leukemia.
On Friday, Berlusconi telephoned Augusto Minzolini, the editor of Milan’s daily newspaper Il Giornale, that the situation was difficult, but that he would “manage it this time as well”.
Before 2001, chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) was fatal for half of the patients. According to aerzteblatt.de, more than 80 percent of those affected live ten years or longer after the diagnosis.
Source: Nachrichten
