CBS News
How a news report led this mom to move 9,000 miles seeking medical treatment for her son
Daisy Villena never expected a news report would change her only child’s life.
Her son Chinno was suffering from severe congenital kyphoscoliosis. All of the vertebrae in his spine were fused together, leaving him with a misshapen back and shoulders. Inside his torso, important organs like his heart and intestines struggled to function, and he couldn’t participate in most physical activities. He was self-conscious and shy, hiding the spinal deformity with a backpack.
Villena had sought care for Chinno in their native Philippines for years to no avail. He had surgery at 7 years old to attempt to put rods in his spine but surgeons found his bones were too soft and couldn’t support the titanium pieces. Then, doctors recommended a brace but what she said was a “lack of attention and resources from the care team” meant Villena and her son “never had the opportunity to pursue that route.”
In 2019, Villena saw a CNN story about a teen whose extreme scoliosis had been treated by New York City surgeon Dr. Lawrence Lenke, co-director of the Och Spine Hospital at NewYork-Presbyterian. Frustrated by her now 10-year-old son’s struggle to receive care, Villena resolved to move to the United States and seek treatment with Lenke.
Daisy Villena
“With every visit with the doctors in the Philippines, I realized that his case would never be treated or addressed properly,” said Villena. “I prayed and set myself a goal to move to the U.S. to find experts who could help correct his spine and find new hope.”
What is congenital kyphoscoliosis?
Scoliosis and kyphosis are both conditions that cause the spine to curve, with kyphosis curving the spine from front to back and scoliosis curving it from side to side. Kyphoscoliosis happens when a person has both conditions at once, said Dr. Joshua Bakhsheshian, a neurosurgeon at the Mayo Clinic who focuses on spinal deformities and was not involved in Chinno’s care.
“It’s one of the most severe types of deformity,” said Bakhsheshian. “It’s also one of the most difficult ones to treat with a good outcome.”
In addition to the rounding or hunching of the back that Chinno experienced, people with kyphoscoliosis may have “severely decreased” lung volume and “severe impacts” to their overall cardiovascular health, Bakhsheshian said. The condition can also compromise a person’s spinal cord.
NewYork-Presbyterian’s Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital
All people have some kyphosis, said Dr. Juan C. Rodriguez-Olaverri, the director of pediatric spinal deformity surgery and early onset scoliosis at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone, who was also not involved in Chinno’s care. The average person has between 25 and 45 degrees of kyphosis. Chinno had 140-degree kyphosis, which Rodriguez-Olaverri described as an “extremely, extremely severe” form of the condition.
Traveling across the world for life-changing care
Villena knew that moving to the United States would be difficult, but years later, she saw an opportunity. Her workplace, a human relations department with a focus on recruiting for a government contracting company in the U.S., was opening an office in Florida. In 2023, she received a work visa, and the pair made the more than 9,000-mile move in 2023.
Chinno and Villena traveled to New York City to meet Lenke about six months later. Chinno, now 17, was experiencing even more complications from the kyphoscoliosis, and the severity of his condition could lead to more health problems, including trouble breathing if left untreated.
Lenke, who has been treating patients with spinal deformities for over 30 years, developed a three-stage treatment approach. First was a process called payload gravity traction, when a ring is pinned on the patient’s skull. Weight is slowly added to try to stretch the spine and prepare the spine and spinal cord for future operations.
After a month, Chinno underwent his first reconstructive spinal surgery. The second followed two weeks later. Each operation took about 10 hours, Lenke said, and the procedures unfused Chinno’s vertebrae and straightened his spine. Seeing her son stand straight brought Villena to tears, she said.
“I was really crying,” Villena said. “It was really fulfilling to see him treated.”
Daisy Villena
The surgeries were followed by several months of physical therapy and rehabilitation, where Chinno relearned how to walk, stand and more. Now, Villena and Chinno are back in Florida, where Chinno has overcome his shyness, is making friends with his classmates and participating in sports he’d always dreamed of playing. Lenke said that Chinno should have no further spinal problems and will be able to live a largely normal life.
“I’ve done this for a long time. I’ve taken care of thousands of patients, and he really just is unique,” Lenke said of Chinno. “I really credit (Villena) for the fortitude and ambition to get him to a center like ours that specializes in this type of complex deformity surgery. It wasn’t an easy thing for her to do. And so I really give them both credit for getting the means and the will to get Chinno to us and for having a great attitude during all this because it’s tough. It’s not an easy road. But they never skipped a beat.”
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
CBS News
Oklahoma attorney general says state schools superintendent cannot mandate students watch prayer video
The Oklahoma attorney general’s office responded after the state’s education superintendent sent an email this week to public school administrators requiring them to show students his video announcement of a new Department of Religious Freedom and Patriotism. In the video, he prays for President-elect Trump.
Ryan Walters, a Republican, announced the new office on Wednesday and on Thursday sent the email to school superintendents statewide. The new department will be within the state’s Department of Education. Walters said it would “oversee the investigation of abuses to individual religious freedom or displays of patriotism.”
“In one of the first steps of the newly created department, we are requiring all of Oklahoma schools to play the attached video to all kids that are enrolled,” according to the email. Districts were also told to send the video to all parents of students.
In the video, Walters says religious liberty has been attacked and patriotism mocked “by woke teachers unions,” then prays for the leaders of the United States after saying students do not have to join in the prayer.
Sue Ogrocki / AP
“In particular, I pray for President Donald Trump and his team as they continue to bring about change to the country,” Walters said.
The office of state Attorney General Gentner Drummond issued a statement Friday saying Walters has no authority under state law to issue such a mandate.
“Not only is this edict unenforceable, it is contrary to parents’ rights, local control and individual free-exercise rights,” said the attorney general’s office spokesperson Phil Bacharach.
Multiple school districts have also said they had no plans to show students the video.
Walters, a former public school teacher elected in 2022, ran on a platform of fighting “woke ideology,” banning books from school libraries and getting rid of “radical leftists” who he claims are indoctrinating children in classrooms. He already faces two lawsuits over his June mandate that schools incorporate the Bible into lesson plans for students in grades 5 through 12. Several school districts have previously stated that they will disregard the mandate.
One of the lawsuits also notes that the initial request for proposal released by the State Department of Education to purchase the Bibles appears to have been tailored to match Bibles endorsed by now President-elect Donald Trump that sell for $59.99 each.
Earlier this week, Walters announced he had purchased more than 500 Bibles to be used in Advanced Placement government classes. The education department that the 500 Bibles are “God Bless the USA Bibles” and were ordered Thursday for about $25,000. They will arrive “in the coming weeks,” the department said.
CBS News
Kamala Harris raised more than $1 billion for her campaign. She’s still sending persistent appeals to donors after defeat.
Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party’s prodigious fundraising operation raised more than $1 billion in her loss to Donald Trump, but the vice president is still pushing donors for more money after the election.
Democrats are sending persistent appeals to Harris supporters without expressly asking them to cover any potential debts, enticing would-be donors instead with other matters: the Republican president-elect’s picks for his upcoming administration and a handful of pending congressional contests where ballots are still being tallied.
“The Harris campaign certainly spent more than they raised and is now busy trying to fundraise,” said Adrian Hemond, a Democratic strategist from Michigan. He said he had been asked by the campaign after its loss to Trump to help with fundraising.
The party is flooding Harris’ lucrative email donor list with near-daily appeals aimed at small-dollar donors — those whose contributions are measured in the hundreds of dollars or less. But Hemond said the postelection effort also includes individual calls to larger donors.
One person familiar with the effort and the Democratic National Committee’s finances said the Harris campaign’s expected shortfall is a relatively small sum compared to the breadth of the campaign, which reported having $119 million cash on hand in mid-October before the Nov. 5 election. That person was not authorized to publicly discuss the campaign’s finances and spoke on condition of anonymity.
But the scramble now underscores the expense involved in a losing effort and the immediate challenges facing Democrats as they try to maintain a baseline political operation to counter the Trump administration and prepare for the 2026 midterm elections. It also calls into question how Democrats used their resources, including hosting events with musicians and other celebrities as well as running ads in a variety of nontraditional spaces such as Las Vegas’ domed Sphere.
Patrick Stauffer, chief financial officer for the Harris campaign, said in a statement that “there were no outstanding debts or bills overdue” on Election Day and there “will be no debt” listed for either the campaign or the DNC on their next financial disclosures, which are due to the Federal Election Commission in December.
The person familiar with the campaign and DNC’s finances said it was impossible to know just where Harris’ balance sheet stands currently. The campaign still is getting invoices from vendors for events and other services from near the end of the race. The campaign also has outstanding receipts; for example, from media organizations that must pay for their employees’ spots on Air Force Two as it traveled for the vice president’s campaign activities.
Within hours of Trump picking Florida Republican Matt Gaetz for attorney general on Wednesday, Harris’ supporters got an appeal for more money for “the Harris Fight Fund,” citing the emerging Trump team and its agenda.
Gaetz, who resigned his House seat after the announcement, “will weaponize the Justice Department to protect themselves,” the email said. It said Democrats “must stop them from executing Trump’s plans for revenge and retribution” and noted that “even his Republican allies are shocked by this” Cabinet choice.
Another appeal followed Friday in Harris’ name.
“The light of America’s promise will burn bright as long as we keep fighting,” the email said, adding that “there are still a number of critical races across the country that are either too close to call or with the margin of recounts or certain legal challenges.”
The emails do not mention Harris’ campaign or its finances.
The “Harris Fight Fund” is a postelection label for the “Harris Victory Fund,” which is the joint fundraising operation of Harris’ campaign, the DNC and state Democratic parties. Despite the language in the recent appeals, most rank-and-file donors’ contributions would be routed to the national party, unless a donor took the time to contact DNC directly and have the money go directly to Harris or a state party.
The fine print at the bottom of the solicitation explains that the first $41,300 from a person and first $15,000 from a political action committee would be allocated to the DNC. The next $3,300 from a person or $5,000 from a PAC would go to the Harris for President “Recount Account.” Anything beyond that threshold, up to maximum contribution limits that can reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, would be spread across state parties.
Officials at the DNC, which is set to undergo a leadership change early next year, indicated the party has no plans to cover any shortfall for Harris but could not explicitly rule out the party shifting any money to the campaign.
