Children’s Hospital Staff Shock 12-Year-Old Swiftie with a Serenade: EXCLUSIVE

If you ask 12-year-old Henry Hinson how long he’s been a Taylor Swift fan, he’ll tell you “since the womb.” And his mom, Erin Hinson, will confirm it’s true.

“I used to put headphones on my belly when he was a baby, and I would listen to ‘Fearless’ and I would listen to ‘Speak Now,’” Hinson tells TODAY.com.

When she was 20 weeks pregnant, Henry was diagnosed with spina bifida, a condition where the spine doesn’t form properly, according to the Mayo Clinic. To manage the stress, Hinson would sing “Long Live” at the top of her lungs, and she says she’d feel Henry dancing inside her.

More than a decade later, that love for Swift would help carry Henry through many of the hardest moments of his young life.

A TikTok video of hospital staff surprising the young superfan with a Swift song customized just for him has gone viral. Henry’s child life specialist and nursing team Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, Indiana serenaded him with a version of “The Life of a Showgirl” reimagined as “The Life of Henry.”

“You have been the life of 9 West and have brought so much joy to all of us and all of our patients and our other families, so we have a little surprise for you,” one staff member says in the video.

Some eagle-eyed Swifties may recognize Henry from a first viral moment 2024, when his Halloween costume caught the attention of Swift’s team, leading to an invitation to the “Eras Tour” where he and his mom got to meet Swift’s mother, Andrea Swift.

The idea for a custom song came from Maddy Rodriguez, Henry’s certified child life specialist, who formed an instant bond with him when they first met.

“The first thing he said to me was, ‘Are you a Swiftie?’ which obviously I am,” Rodriguez tells TODAY.com. “So it made the relationship just so natural and gave us something to talk about.”

When Henry’s mom told the hospital staff that they’d had to miss their planned at-home “Eras Tour” documentary watch party due to his hospitalization, Rodriguez knew she had to do something special for him.

“That’s just part of being a child life specialist, trying to celebrate our kids during really hard times and bringing these personalized moments to them,” she says.

Hospital staffers threw an all-day party for Henry, with Hinson’s help — she bought cupcakes, special decorations and giant friendship bracelets to share with other young Swifties in the hospital.

Swift’s music played in his room throughout the day, and Henry called in staff members when their favorite songs came on. His doctors joined in, too, wearing their heart-shaped glasses and dancing. “He just had a really great day,” Hinson says.

It culminated in a performance of “The Life of Henry.” Set to the backing track of the album’s titular song, the team launched into their personalized lyrics celebrating everything that makes Henry special.

“Working with him these last three weeks and getting to know who he is as Henry first, because he is Henry before a patient,” Rodriguez explains. “I just thought of all of his favorite things.”

Henry’s reaction? “I was in shock, like I cried and laughed,” he tells TODAY.com. His favorite part of the song was “when they talked about me liking Swig and 67.”

“I don’t know that they will ever understand the impact that that had on Henry, and on me,” Hinson says. “Because they didn’t just offer medical care that day. It wasn’t just them doing their jobs. They saw Henry.”

The viral performance came during a particularly challenging time for Henry, who has undergone 25 surgeries related to his condition. The week before Thanksgiving, Henry was hospitalized after going into septic shock and required surgery and time on a ventilator as his body fought infection.

“His bravery, in my opinion, is unmatched,” Hinson says, her voice catching with emotion. “He faces a lot of really big, scary things.”

For Henry, Swift’s music serves as more than entertainment, it’s a lifeline during scary moments.

“When he is scared, when he has to go to the CT machine or he’s going back into surgery, all somebody has to do is say, ‘Well, tell me about the time you went to the Eras Tour,’ and he’s instantly transported into this place that’s safe and secure and that he understands. It just makes his days inside of this hospital a little bit easier,” she says.

Henry now watches the video of the performance regularly, and his mom catches him humming his own personalized version of the song.

She tells both her sons — Henry and his 15-year-old brother, Oliver— that “joy is a choice we make every day.”

“In the hard times, it’s especially important that we choose joy, that we look for joy, because it is what sustains us. And so for Henry, he oozes it. He literally oozes joy,” she says.

The viral attention has inspired Henry and his family to give back. When Hinson told Henry that the TikTok video was starting to earn money through the creator fund, “he didn’t miss a beat and he said, ‘Mom, I think we should donate it back to the hospital. You know, they’re the reason we’re getting it,’” she recalls.

Both Henry and his brother Oliver asked their mom to create an Amazon wish list for the child life team at Riley instead of receiving gifts for themselves for the holidays this year.

“They both were like, ‘Mom, we have enough stuff,’” Hinson says. The public wish list includes items like Lip Smackers chapstick, which child life specialists use to coat the inside of anesthesia masks so kids smell strawberry or chocolate instead of a sterile operating room.

“Child life specialists often work with a very limited budget, but the work they do is so incredibly important,” Hinson explains. “I’m just incredibly grateful that the internet gets to see the work that really goes into loving children through critical illness.”