Cheney to co-author 'medical memoir'

Former vice president Dick Cheney, who has suffered at least five heart attacks since the late 1970s, will co-author a medical memoir with his cardiologist and daughter Liz Cheney, publishing company Scribner said Tuesday.

Cheney, 71, had his first heart attack in June 1978 at age 37, to be followed by heart attacks in 1984, 1988, 2000, and 2010. His 2000 heart attack occurred shortly after that year's election, when he won the vice presidency.

He had a successful heart transplant in March of this year.

The publisher described him as "one of the most prominent and well-known cardiac patients in the world."

The book will be co-authored by Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who practices at George Washington University Hospital and teaches at the university's medical center in Washington, D.C. The collaboration will allow for an "intimate understanding of the disease from a patient's perspective, and through Dr. Reiner, a physician's view of the particular problems of dealing with a disease both chronic and acute," Scribner's president Susan Moldow wrote in a statement.

In his 2011 memoir "In My Time," the former vice president described his first heart attack.

He had awoken at 2:00 a.m. with a tingling in his hand. His wife drove him to the Cheyenne Memorial Hospital, and sitting in the waiting room after having passed out, "I couldn't help but think of my grandfather, my mother's father, who had had heart disease and had suffered his last heart attack in our home. Heart attacks ran in my family, and I knew they were serious business."

"Here I was, thirty-seven years old and a heart patient, wondering if I might have to give up my campaign and my hoped-for career in politics," he continued.

He described how "the tobacco companies supplied free cartons of cigarettes to the Nixon and Ford White Houses," where he had served, and was eventually "going through two or three packs a day."

The book is slated for publication in the fall of 2013.