Maybe you just need better formatting of your DateTime::Duration?

use DateTime;
use DateTime::Format::Human::Duration;
my $endDate = DateTime->new(year => 2015, month => 02, day => 24,
    time_zone  => 'America/New_York');
my $now = DateTime->now( 'time_zone' => 'America/New_York' );
my $durfmt = DateTime::Format::Human::Duration->new();
print $durfmt->format_duration_between($now, $endDate), "\n";
__END__
5 days, 6 hours, 58 minutes, and 30 seconds
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