On the days she didn’t need to be hospitalized while being treated for leukemia, 8-year-old Harper Harrell was able to go home and sleep in her own bed. Duke Children’s Hospital is just 1.9 miles from her family’s home in Durham.
During the nearly two and a half years of her treatment, Harper, now 12, traveled to the hospital more than 100 times for various reasons — chemotherapy, transfusions, MRIs, checkups. She spent more than 50 days hospitalized between receiving the diagnosis in October 2021 and finishing treatment in February 2024.
It became a ritual every night to give thanks for something positive, said Heather Hindin, Harper’s mom. Often, she said, they gave thanks for that short drive that allowed them to stay at home during treatment.
“To know that we could come home and rest our heads on our couch with our dogs and to be with my mom who was here helping … I feel like it made a significant difference for us in the successful completion of treatment, staying well, not just health-wise, but also kind of emotionally and mentally,” Hindin said.
In a 2020 study in Pediatrics researchers studied access to pediatric care in the United States. Access varied widely, and in some cases even when care was nearby, beds were limited, the researchers found. For many children, life-saving and life-enhancing pediatric care is not close.
“It may be sobering to realize that the need to drive more than one hour to reach hospital-based pediatric services is more the rule than the exception,” the authors wrote.
Harper and her mom wanted to give other families dealing with difficult times that same chance at comfort that living close to the hospital afforded them. They’re breaking ground later this month on the first phase of Harper’s Home — a series of cottages and duplexes on their property to house up to eight families with children being treated at Duke Children’s Hospital.
“We had so many friends that were getting treatment from Duke Children’s as well who needed to travel from very far away,” Harper said. “We had enough land, and we knew that we could do something about it.”
Filling a need
Families often find themselves living out of hotels or trying to find a short-term rental near the hospital, which can be very expensive, Hindin said. Harper’s Home is available on a sliding scale — free or at minimal cost.
Hindin and Harper didn’t want to wait until they could build something, so last fall they rented and furnished two homes a few miles from Duke Children’s Hospital.
Since September, they’ve helped four families, with one staying 203 nights. In all, Harper’s Home has housed families for more than 350 nights at the homes, Hindin said.
They’re not alone. Ronald McDonald House has long provided places for families to stay while their children receive treatment. In the Triangle, there are three residential Ronald McDonald House facilities that can provide housing for a total of 103 families each night.
Heather Hindin Smaller programs similar to Harper’s Home have come and gone in the area, Hindin said.
The need for such housing is consistently pressing.
Social workers with Duke Children’s Hospital told Hindin that 2,400 families traveled more than 40 miles to access care at the hospital in 2024. The average stay was 12 nights. Last year, that increased to 3,200 families with an average stay of 11 nights, she said.
“Even with places like the Ronald McDonald House, and there’s some other small nonprofits that are specific to certain diagnoses, they don’t touch the need,” Hindin said. “And I think we all wish that we could do more … but it’s just, it’s a real struggle.”
Harper’s Home provides private housing, which differs from Ronald McDonald House, which offers shared living space to families, with communal kitchens and dining and living areas.
At Harper’s Home, families have their own kitchen, their own bathrooms, their own washer and dryer.
“There’s no check in,” Hindin said. “Our job is to get them a place to stay, and it is … theirs for the time that they are here in treatment.”
Harper’s Home is also pet-friendly.
“We’ve met friends who have had to give up their family pets because they couldn’t … handle one additional thing to consider,” she said.
Close to care
Being close to a pediatric hospital is not just about convenience. It can mean the difference between life and death.
Chemotherapy kills cancer cells, but it also disrupts the body’s balance of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell that fights infections. A low neutrophil count can also mask the signs of sepsis, the body’s overreaction to an infection that can quickly lead to organ failure and death.
For cancer patients, a fever of 100.4 degrees can mean an infection is spiraling toward sepsis.
One time when Hindin’s sister was visiting, Harper spiked a fever. Hindin kept taking her daughter’s temperature, watching as it crept up into dangerous territory.
“I remember both of us crying and just feeling so sad that, you know, you think you have some freedom, at least for a little while, and then being forced to go back [to the hospital],” Hindin said.
What they never had to worry about was getting to the hospital quickly enough to receive antibiotics before sepsis set in. That time between a spiking fever and treatment is often described as “the golden hour” because treatment is most effective if it is received within an hour of symptoms.
Their home is about an 11-minute drive to Duke Children’s Hospital.
“It’s just a really critical part of treatment,” Hindin said. “For some of those kids, they won’t get released from the hospital if they don’t have a place to stay that is really close.”
Community support
Last year, Hindin subdivided her nearly one-acre property into three parcels to make room for Harper’s Home.
Two cottages and two duplexes will be built first, providing housing for six families. The second phase will include a carriage house with an apartment upstairs and another cottage or duplex.
The entire project is expected to cost about $1.3 million.
They’re raising money, and an anonymous donor recently provided $200,000, Hindin said. One of the cottages will be named for the donor’s wife, who died of brain cancer.
They met that donor last year after Harper was picked to throw a basketball to a celebrity participating in the Charity Stripe Challenge at a Duke University men’s basketball game. Her celebrity made the foul shot, earning $1,000 for Duke Children’s Hospital from an anonymous donor. That donor stayed in touch with Harper and Hindin and decided to support their work, Harper said.
Before the rental homes opened last fall, community members bought all of the housewarming items for Harper’s Home through registries set up at Target and Amazon.
Harper used some of her own money to decorate one of the rooms for the brother of a patient receiving treatment at Duke Children’s Hospital. She made sure to use things that he really loved.
“If I were to have to move somewhere strange and be so scared, because … my favorite brother is in the hospital, my best friend, basically, I would be so scared and want to know that a place like this could be home,” she said.
With Harper’s Home, they have found their purpose, Hindin said. Going through the rigors and the ups and downs of cancer treatment and staying alive also taught them what they are capable of, she said.
Hindin said they’ll continue to advocate for pediatric cancer research. Harper has already raised $27,000 for the V Foundation for Cancer Research.
Meanwhile, they’ll spread the story of Harper’s Home as they work to complete permanent buildings to support families like theirs.
“We’re chipping away at it,” Hindin said. “We’re having so much fun, and love the work that we’re doing, and we’re just going to keep putting one foot in front of the other.”
Correction: Harper Harrell has raised more than $27,000 for the V Foundation for Cancer Research, not Duke Children's Hospital. That information was incorrect when this story was originally published.
Jennifer Fernandez wrote this article; she spoke to Hindin and Harper and did additional online research. Rose Hoban edited the story. Jen Goode Stevens copyedited the story. The headline was written with the assistance of AI but was edited by a human.
This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
North Carolina Health News is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit, statewide news organization dedicated to covering all things health care in North Carolina. Visit NCHN at northcarolinahealthnews.org.
