With new heart pump, Cheney slowly resumes old life

WASHINGTON —

A few days before Christmas, former Vice President Dick Cheney emerged from several months of a self-imposed political sabbatical to headline a fundraiser for Maria Cino, a party operative and Bush administration official who is running to replace Michael Steele as head of the Republican National Committee.

The fundraiser for Cino, held at the Alexandria, Va., home of Cheney's former aide Mary Matalin, was his first major foray into partisan Washington political theater since receiving a mechanical heart pump in July that has, most doctors say, saved Cheney's life by taking on the task of helping to push blood through his arteries.

Cheney, as he did at several holiday receptions in Washington, chatted about his new pump. At one cocktail party, he even opened his coat jacket to show it off. While Cheney is noticeably thinner — his trademark stiff, one-sided grin now shows up on a markedly leaner face — he is returning, associates say, to his old life, including hunting and socializing.

But for the most part, Cheney has put aside his public role as the fiery, combative political figure of the past two years, who seemed to relish every opportunity to engage in verbal jousting with President Obama.

With President George W. Bush having decided to stay largely silent during Obama's tenure, Cheney embraced the role of public critic, accusing the new, young president of rolling back Bush-era policies and undermining the nation's security. In 2009, Cheney and Obama gave dueling speeches on the same day.

Now, however, family members and friends paint a portrait of a man less focused on the day-to-day back-and-forth in Washington and one more interested in documenting his years of service in a memoir and navigating life with his new pump.

At 69, Cheney's heart will never beat at full strength again, doctors say. His new mechanical pump, a partial artificial heart known as a ventricular assist device, leaves patients without a pulse because it pushes blood continuously instead of mimicking the heart's own beat.

Most pulse-less patients feel nothing unusual, but the devices do pose significant risks of infection.

They are implanted as a last resort either for permanent use or as a bridge to transplant until a donor heart can be found.

Cheney, who has participated in some of the nation's toughest decisions for decades, now faces a crucial one of his own: whether to seek a full heart transplant.

It is a decision he will most likely be forced to make within months. He is old enough that soon he will no longer qualify for a transplant, doctors say. And while it is possible for some patients with Cheney's device to live for years, the long-term prospects remain unknown.

His family and friends will not talk publicly with any specificity about the former vice president's heart condition or the steps he might be taking to confront it.

But in the meantime, Cheney has begun resuming his old activities. In addition to the Cino fundraiser, he attended a round of holiday parties in Washington — leaving whispers in his trail about his weight loss.

"For all of the caricatures of him, he never lets it get under his skin," said Matalin, a close friend.

Cheney, who spent the holidays at his ranch in Wyoming, recently had a class of West Point cadets over to his house in McLean, Va., to talk about his experiences working for four of the past five Republican presidents and what it was like to work at the White House.

In Wyoming, he has been spotted in local groceries, stocking up to make chili and spaghetti sauce, "as well as walking me through how to cook Christmas dinner," his daughter Liz Cheney said in an e-mail.

But most of all, Liz Cheney said, her father has been working on his book, which is scheduled to come out this fall.

"He still prefers to write in longhand on yellow legal pads despite my efforts to introduce a laptop into his process," she said.

By supplementing the amount of blood pumped through the body, Cheney's pump allows him to do many things he would do with a working heart. Such patients can bicycle, golf, play tennis, drive, shop and generally do what they did before they developed severe heart failure. They need to take an anticoagulant, like warfarin (sold under the brand name Coumadin), and have blood tests to monitor the amount.

Cheney's pump was placed near his heart. With most patients, a power line emerges about waist level and connects to a controller, a minicomputer that plugs into a pair of 1 1/2-pound, 12-volt batteries. Patients wear a black mesh vest over their clothing that holds the controller and batteries. They usually cannot shower and have to be satisfied with sponge baths.

Cheney's friends and family say he is making plans to get out in 2011 and give more speeches. On Jan. 20, he is to fly to Texas for the 20th anniversary of the Persian Gulf war with the first President George Bush, the emir of Kuwait and a host of alumni of that administration, including Brent Scowcroft, the former national-security adviser, and Colin Powell, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, when Cheney was defense secretary.

On Tuesday night, Cheney was the host of a fundraiser at the home of some friends in Jackson, Wyo., for a scholarship program that he and his wife, Lynne, have begun at the University of Wyoming. They donated $4.5 million to help create scholarships for students to study overseas. In his remarks, Cheney said that after getting kicked out of Yale twice, he owed getting his life back on track to the University of Wyoming.

Cheney's heart pump is also allowing him to go to the movies.

"He and my mom went to see 'True Grit' at the Teton Theater here in Jackson a few days ago," Liz Cheney said. Her parents, she said, gave it "two thumbs up."