Daughter’s Gifts to Father: Kidney and Time to Dance

Christine Newman has given her father a third chance at life and another opportunity for him to get on the dance floor and do a mean cha cha.

Newman, who was released Monday from Sharp Memorial Hospital, said she was happy to have donated a kidney to her father, Louis Tabone, a former ballroom dance instructor who can’t wait to show his stuff again.

“Every father goes through life thinking you’ve done the best for your children,” said an emotional Tabone, 67, while recovering in the hospital. But he said that knowing that his daughter had given a part of her body to keep him alive “is very touching” and proof that he instilled the right values in his children.

Doctors attribute Tabone’s kidney failure to anti-rejection medication he has been taking since a heart transplant in 1990. That medication, doctors said, will help Tabone’s body accept the new organ.

A spokeswoman for Sharp Memorial Hospital said Tabone is the hospital’s first patient to receive different organs in separate transplants.

Newman, 39, said there was never any question about what she was going to do when doctors told her that she was a compatible donor. Was she scared? “Not even on the day of surgery,” she said.

“I told him I’d give him a kidney if he needed one,” Newman said. “My other sister couldn’t [because she was not a close enough match]. I could. . . . You just don’t say no.”

As if donating a kidney was not enough of a challenge, Newman’s husband, Ray, was half serious when he said that she would have to promise to quit tobacco if she was going to donate a kidney, she said.

“I had to quit smoking,” she said.

Newman and Tabone, both of Costa Mesa, were at a news conference Monday, where doctors announced the transplant, performed six days ago, a success. A hospital spokeswoman said Tabone was fortunate that one of his children was able to provide a compatible organ.

Kidney recipients in the United States wait from three to five years for matching donors, Nina Valentine said.

Newman, a clerk, was released Monday and driven home. Her father is expected to be released later this week.

Now that his health is improving, Tabone said he cannot wait to get home and get back to his favorite pastimes: dancing and cooking Italian. Tabone said he also wants to savor a glass of red wine.

“I fool around with cooking, and I’ll now be able to do that again. I make my own pasta and bake my own bread,” he said. He had been unable to spend time in the kitchen since his kidneys began to fail two years ago because he could not stand for long periods.

When he was a younger man, and before a series of heart attacks forced him to curtail his physical activity, Tabone owned dance studios in Torrance and Inglewood for 15 years and was a ballroom dancing instructor.

But because of his heart problems, and later, failing kidneys, Tabone said he had been unable to enjoy dancing.

On Monday, the Buffalo, N.Y., native said he is looking forward to hitting the dance floor again as soon as doctors give him the go-ahead. Although it has been almost 20 years since he has danced, Tabone said he isn’t rusty.

“You never lose the rhythm,” he said.