It was a much more aggressive sight than she expected. Medical staff told her beforehand that if she didn’t like blood, then she wasn’t going to like this, but curiosity trumped any squeamishness. Two doctors stood on each side of the anesthetized mother and pulled apart her abdomen, revealing a baby’s head.

“The baby was crying,” Jesmer said. “Just like normal.”

This experience inspired Jesmer’s senior project at school.

As part of her senior project, Jesmer is raising funds to purchase a piece of medical equipment for AMC. Her goal is $3,000, and people can donate on adirondackgives.com until May 8.

The equipment she’s looking to buy is an OB Susie.

An OB Susie is similar to a CPR dummy. It’s a piece of medical learning equipment but instead of teaching people how to kick-start breathing and blood flow in an someone who’s unconscious, it teaches them how to deliver babies. Jesmer said the tools are pretty faithful to a female reproductive system during childbirth.

“There’s literally every part that you would see,” she said. “There’s a baby. There is an umbilical cord you can actually cut. There’s a placenta. There’s a removable abdomen. The skin feels really like human skin. It’s just the torso, though. It’s not, like, a full body, but still, it’s very realistic.”

An OB Susie can simulate many forms of childbirth such as a routine one, a c-section and a breech birth when a baby comes out feet first. That’s good because it provides a wide range of learning for medical staff, Jesmer said.

“Having our local hospital in Saranac Lake be prepared and educated on doing emergency c-sections, for example, is extremely important to our community,” she said. “There’s not many people to deal with these situations when they happen, but they’ll be more educated by having this simulator.”

Every graduating LPHS student has to do a senior project revolving around something that will benefit the community. Jesmer said because the topic is about providing change, many students’ projects tend to involve some form of fundraising. She was originally going to raise funds for Ipads but saw that the hospital already had a good amount of tablets, so that’s when she started focusing on more hands-on equipment like the OB Susie.

“People having babies there want to know that the staff is educated and knows what’s going to happen and how to react to certain situations,” she said.

She is already off to a good start with Adirondack Health giving her $500, which was left over from a previous senior project where a student raised money to buy cribs for the hospital.

Jesmer started visiting the hospital three days a week when she was selected to participate in BOCES’s New Vision program, a firsthand learning experience for students possibly seeking careers in the medical field. She said it’s a highly competitive program with only 12 seniors from Lake Placid, Saranac Lake, Tupper Lake and the surrounding area being chosen each year. Jesmer said New Vision has an intensive curriculum, which usually requires about three hours of homework a night.

She used to be a year-round athlete but decided to play just softball in the spring, so she could focus on her studies.

Jesmer knew that she wanted to pursue a career in healthcare but with so many departments to choose from – cardiology, diagnostic imaging, critical care, etc. – she wasn’t sure which field was best for her.

“I thought that this was going to be a perfect little exploring time for me,” she said, “and it really has been. I’ve been able to narrow down my options a lot.”

Jesmer has two aunts that have worked in nursing for 30 years, and after New Vision experience, she plans to follow in their footsteps.

“I started off wanting to be an anesthesiologist and then now I want to be a nurse.

It may be tough balancing, school work, softball and New Vision work, but Jesmer showed true conviction toward working in the medical field.

“I enjoy taking care of and helping people,” Jesmer said. “I enjoy knowing that I’m making people happy and doing good things.”