BABE #368: ERIN TRACY - Pediatric Oncology Nurse, Wolfson Children’s Hospital
Erin works 12-hour shifts taking care of children and their families who are battling unimaginable pain. As a full-time registered nurse at Wolfson Children’s Hospital in the pediatric hematology and oncology unit, Erin is responsible for arranging the best plan of care possible for each child that walks through their door. On her (limited) time off, she runs Fourth and Gold, which she founded to bring awareness to children’s cancer research and the lack of funding it receives. Erin’s work is selfless, challenging, rewarding and vital to not only the community she serves, but to our world at large.
The Basics:
Hometown: Pulaski, New York
Current city: Jacksonville, Florida
Alma mater: Grand Canyon University
Degree: B.A., Nursing
Very first job: Recreation counselor at a kids camp
Hustle: Registered Nurse, Wolfson Children’s Hospital; Owner, Fourth & Gold
The Interests:
Babe you admire and why?
Nora McInerny. Within six weeks in 2014, Nora miscarried her second child, lost her father to lymphoma and lost her husband, Aaron, to brain cancer. During this tragedy, Nora became a single mom to a toddler and learned now to re-navigate life. Nora has channeled her grief into a business called “Still Kickin,” and is a constant reminder that through the biggest struggles, heartaches and challenges that there’s still hope.
How do you spend your free time?
Football. All things football, especially the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Clemson Tigers. I’m a big believer in work hard, but play even harder. I travel a lot throughout the year, and also have three staple vacations that include one trip to New York in August, one away Jaguars game every year, and one international trip, too. My family and I love to get outdoors in the spring and fall, exploring new cities and taking nature walks. Anything with my family keeps my heart full. If you asked anyone else this question about me, they’d probably tell you I spend my free time dressing up my dog and pretending he’s a human.
Favorite fictional female character?
D.D. Warren, from the Lisa Gardner book series. She’s a homicide detective and she is a boss. She works hard and gets what she wants. If you haven’t read those books, I highly recommend them.
What would you eat for your very last meal?
It’s going to be a hodgepodge. I would probably choose cauliflower penne pasta with April’s homemade roasted red pepper sauce and a side of my grandma’s homemade green beans and pickles; cucumbers with salt, a glass of sweet red wine, and a confetti bundt cake for dessert.
What’s something you want to learn or master?
I want to master how to be a better long-distance runner.
If you could have coffee with anyone in the world, who would it be?
This is easy. I had a patient who stole my heart over and over again twofold, and he passed away after a battle with cancer. I would give anything to have coffee (or juice) with him just one more time.
What’s something most don’t know about you?
I want to be a foster parent one day, and I am a vegetarian.
The Hustle:
Tell us about your hustle.
I work as a registered nurse full-time at Wolfson Children’s Hospital on the pediatric hematology/oncology unit. My job consists of 12-hour shifts (6:45 a.m. to 7:15 p.m.) taking care of children and their families who are battling through the unimaginable. Not only do I have the opportunity to take care of them medically, I am lucky enough to get to know most of them personally. On any given day, I can be hanging chemotherapy in one room and running to the next room to play candyland with a child who just needs a little extra attention. On a daily basis, I interact with nursing assistants, nurses, social workers, nurse practitioners and doctors to arrange the best plan of care possible for our oncology/hematology kids. When I am not working full-time at the hospital, I am working on running my foundation, Fourth and Gold. I started Fourth and Gold in 2018 to bring awareness to childhood cancer research and the lack of funding it receives (4 percent of all government funding!). I consistently work at creating events in the city, interviewing parents of children with cancer, writing blogs, funding research, and growing my foundation.
What does your typical workday look like?
If I am at the hospital, my workday can be super challenging (but rewarding). It all depends on the patient population at the time. Overall, I mostly spend 12 to 13 hours with the best kids in the world. Truly. They’ve been dealt a really unfair hand and somehow, they handle their situation with grace, strength and smiles. Of course, it isn’t fun or an ideal situation; I’d gladly be in another profession if childhood cancer didn’t exist, but because it does right now, I do my best to bring sunshine in a really difficult darkness. In those 12 to 13 hours, I can be whoever my patient needs to be. A nurse giving medications? You got it. A housekeeper taking out the trash? No problem. A friend that you need to vent to? My pleasure. Nurses wear so many different hats; unless you’ve been in that situation, you might not understand. If I’m working on Fourth and Gold, I spend a lot of time writing, making connections with local companies, and talking to families affected by cancer. Fourth and Gold has nothing to do with who I am as a nurse, and that’s the biggest challenge I have with the two. My hat with Fourth and Gold is the “we don’t get enough research funding” hat, and my nursing hat is just that, nursing. Fourth and Gold is an outlet in a different form because I am able to pour my time and energy into research funding, escaping the nursing aspect for a short time. On any given day with Fourth and Gold, I am creating designs for upcoming events, writing politicians to get more research funding, and coming up with creative ideas to keep community involvement high.
How have your roles changed because of COVID-19?
Things have changed at the hospital tremendously. We are required to wear masks 24/7, we are required to wear protective glasses in every patient room and we are subjected to temperature screenings prior to entering the hospital. For visitors, our patients are only allowed one parent at the bedside, and if the other parent wishes to come, the first one has to go downstairs and sign out, agreeing that nobody is at the bedside. It is definitely strange, but necessary for not only our protection, but the patient as well, at this time. Our hospital has been great in doing what they can to keep us safe. For Fourth and Gold, we have slowed down a great deal. I had to cancel our cornhole tournament, which usually raises around $3,500 for childhood cancer research, so that was hard to deal with. I’ve also tried to limit my social media presence out of respect for those dealing with the COVID-19 crisis personally. It’s been challenging, but I’m hopeful for a sense of normalcy to return and I can get back to doing what I love the most in this world: raising money for childhood cancer research.
Tell us about Fourth and Gold.
Fourth and Gold started out as a small business, but is currently switching gears to become an official nonprofit. I had the vision for the foundation when I learned that the National Institute of Health only gives 4 percent of all research funding to childhood cancer. I was completely shocked when I heard this, and I truly didn’t believe it. 4 percent? What can anyone do with 4 percent? I was even more taken aback when I learned that only four new drugs have been developed specifically for childhood cancer since 1980. I knew I had to jump in and start taking action, because that is completely unacceptable. Our main mission is to find and fund a more humane cure for childhood cancer, because the treatment today often does more harm than good, especially years down the road. The name Fourth and Gold comes from my love of football. In football, if you’re on the goaline and you haven’t converted the first three downs, you’re now considered “fourth and goal” meaning you’re within scoring distance, but it’s your last chance before turning the ball over. If you go for it and you’re successful, you score a touchdown. If you go for it and you’re not successful, you turn the ball over to the other team without scoring. For us, our touchdown is the cure for childhood cancer. It doesn’t matter how many odds are stacked against us; we’re going for it every time. It may take us 30 years to score and not turn the ball over, but we fully believe in our mission that we will see a more humane cure for childhood cancer in our lifetime.
The Fourth and Gold launch was inspired by an 18-month-old little girl from my hometown, Charlie Peter. I went to high school with Charlie’s mom, Brittney, and Charlie was diagnosed with leukemia. In September 2017 I did a fundraiser where I designed and created over 100 T-shirts that said “Fight Kid Cancer, Go Gold” and donated 100 percent of the profit to CURE Childhood Cancer out of Atlanta. It was my first ever fundraiser and I donated over $2,000. That was a high for me. I knew I had to continue to do things like that, so that’s where Fourth and Gold was born. Charlie is currently 3, and finished her cancer treatments in November. She will forever have the most special place in my heart.
What are some common misconceptions about your job?
For nursing, my biggest pet peeve is when people comment, “You only work three days a week, what a dream!” In three days, I work 38 to 40 hours and face probably every emotion under the sun. In those three days, you completely put yourself on the backburner and attend to the needs of your patients and families, no matter what. It’s three days of constantly moving, paying attention to every single detail, talking, putting your emotions in check and leaving them outside. It does not matter what’s happening at home, you cannot bring it to work. If you’re distracted even the slightest, you can miss something very important. It’s three days of life-and-death situations. After working those three days, I’m exhausted and spend a full day “recovering.” Maybe that’s the same for every job, but I can’t imagine going up to someone and saying: “Wow! You get to sleep in and only work nine-to-five?! What a dream!” It’s rude. A struggle that most people won’t see is that we bring our jobs home with us emotionally. It’s physically impossible to clock out and not think about your patients and families just because you walked out of the door. I’ll admit that my coworkers and I text each other often checking on patients when we’re not there. It’s the nature of the job because our hearts are in it, for better or worse. For Fourth and Gold, I struggle to produce content daily. There’s only so many times you can be angry about the National Institute of Health not providing adequate funding, or pharmaceutical companies discontinuing a chemotherapy drug that kids need. I also struggle with providing positive stories and negative stories. Weirdly, there are positive stories that come out of childhood cancer. But there are also realistic, hard-to-see, negative ones. Ones that include kids dying from cancer, or dying from the toxic treatment. I fully believe to even attempt to understand the nature of the disease, you need to see both. Bringing in the negative really triggers emotions for some people, so I don’t talk about it or show it as much as I believe I should. I honestly struggle so much with that.
What’s one of the biggest obstacles you’ve faced in your work?
Having a patient I grew very close to pass away will always be the biggest obstacle I’ve faced and I’d be lying if I felt I’ve overcome it. It’s the one thing that I feel has rocked me to my core through and through. He became so much like family to me. I’ve never known a pain like that and I think about it daily. My biggest fear is that after a while, he’d become just another statistic that everyone forgets about, so while I grieve, I also work tirelessly to advocate for research funding so that maybe one day it won’t happen ever again. I think that’s a huge part of why over the last year I’ve really thrown myself into Fourth and Gold. I stopped taking “maybe” and “no” for answers and started demanding “yes.” Yes, I will have a meeting with the congress, yes I will march in Washington, D.C. for a cure, and yes, I will continue to fight. Because at the end of the day, if you’re not fighting for your kids, what are you even living for?
Who are some women in your field that you look to for inspiration?
For nursing, one of the best nurses I know and look up to in pediatric oncology is Avery Messina. Avery is one of my best friends and one of the funniest people I know. We share a dry sense of humor (nurses!), and we help each other get through the day. If there’s an emergency situation, Avery is your girl. There could be a fire behind you and you wouldn't know it by looking at her face. Avery recently went to New York City to work on the front lines of COVID-19 and I was really nervous for her, physically and emotionally. I am thankful for her and what she stands for, because not everyone can do that.
Career and/or life advice for other babes?
It’s cliché, but find the thing that sets your soul on fire and commit to it. I couldn’t imagine spending 40 hours a week doing something I dreaded. I would do this job for free if I could make ends meet. There’s nothing better than earning a living while doing what you love.
Connect with Erin:
Email / Business FB / Business IG / Personal IG
This interview has been condensed and edited.
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