Elizabeth Edwards: John's Affair Made Me Throw Up

"I cried and screamed, I went to the bathroom and threw up," she writes in Resilience (to be published May 12), according to an excerpt by New York's Daily News.

See photos of more celeb scandals

Elizabeth, 59, who is battling terminal breast cancer, says that John, 55, admitted to an affair with Rielle Hunter just days after declaring his run for president in 2006 -- nearly a year before the National Enquirer broke the story. (She also writes that when John initially admitted the affair he "left most of the truth out.")

To protect her and their three children from media scrutiny, Elizabeth says she urged him to drop out of the presidential race.

He ignored her.

Look back at the most embarrassing moments of the 2008 presidential campaign

Last August -- seven months after he quit the race -- the Enquirer reported he was the father of videographer Hunter's infant daughter. John denied paternity; Elizabeth does not address it in the book.

But she declares, "He should not have run."

See Hollywood's ugliest splits

Elizabeth also takes aim at Hunter -- whom she never identifies by name.

She writes that Hunter initially seduced her husband outside a swank New York hotel by telling him, "You are so hot."

She suggests Hunter was nothing more than a sad groupie. (Hunter received $114,000 from his political action committee to produce Web site documentaries for the Edwards campaign.)

While her own life may be tragic, Elizabeth writes, Hunter's is "pathetic."

See today's top celeb news photos

Although she has struggled to cope with her husband's affair, Elizabeth suggests she forgives him and that they are now on better terms.

"I lie in bed, circles under my eyes, my sparse hair sticking in too many directions, and he looks at me as if I am the most beautiful woman he has ever seen," she writes. "It matters."