When Jessica Rodriguez got off the bus after grocery shopping this past November, she felt a pang of jaw pain. She’d recently had some dental work and assumed that was the cause. The pain came and went, so she figured it would go away on its own eventually. But by the time dinner came around, Rodriguez, 55, of Queens, New York, tells TODAY.com the pain had only gotten worse. “I cooked dinner and when my daughter sat down to eat, the pain started again — bad,” she recalls. It was so painful, “I put my head down at the table,” she says. Her daughter was concerned. But Rodriguez, who describes herself as someone who rarely gets sick and doesn’t like to see doctors, convinced herself it would pass. “Being a woman and being who I am … I kept thinking of reasons that it was OK for me to feel like this,” she recalls. And although she did fall asleep eventually, she woke up suddenly around 4 a.m. when the pain was even more severe. “It felt like somebody had my jaw in a vice grip,” she says. Finally, around 9 a.m., she woke her daughter up and said she needed medical attention. Jessica Rodriguez is sharing her surprising heart attack symptom to encourage other women to get any symptoms checked out. Pushing Herself to Get Care Rodriguez called 911, and when EMTs arrived, they gave her an electrocardiogram (EKG), which measures patterns of electrical signals from the heart. Her results were “not that bad,” she says, and ultimately she was given the choice to go to the hospital or not. At first, she thought, she could just stay home and check in with her usual doctor the next day instead. “But then I really thought it through, and I said, ‘So what’s going to happen? They’re going to leave and I’m going to be stuck here in this pain?'” Rodriguez recalls. The idea was enough to make her realize she needed to get to the hospital. So, she walked herself to the ER and met with a doctor. “I looked him in his eyes, and I started crying,” she recalls. “I said, I would never come to the ER if it wasn’t (serious). I know my body, and there is something seriously wrong with me.” The doctor took her concerns seriously, and “then it became like an ‘ER’ episode,” Rodriguez says, as she was whisked away for tests. Tests Revealed She Had a 100% Blockage That doctor was Dr. Jonathan Murphy, an interventional cardiologist at Mount Sinai Queens. While the first EKG had given Rodriguez inconclusive results, she had an additional EKG in the hospital that suggested she was having “the worst kind of heart attack,” called an ST elevation heart attack, Murphy explains. She then underwent an angiogram, Murphy says, which involves putting contrast dye into each of the heart’s three arteries to look for blockages. That test revealed a 100% blockage in her right coronary artery and another significant blockage in the circumflex artery. Rodriguez had two significant blockages in her arteries, leading to a heart attack. With those results, Rodriguez immediately underwent surgery to place a stent in the right coronary artery and relieve the blockage. Most people spend two to three days in the hospital recovering from a heart attack and stent procedure, Murphy says, but Rodriguez hit all her benchmarks quickly. “In like 23 hours, they released me and I was back in the supermarket — straight from having a heart attack,” she laughs. And just last month, she received a second stent in the circumflex artery. “I’m a Walking PSA” Immediately after her heart attack, Rodriguez says her life felt a little surreal, as if “the only difference was that I’m taking six pills a day.” (That typically includes cholesterol medication, as well as aspirin and a blood thinner to help the stent stay open, Dr. Murphy says.) But as the reality set in, she began making some healthy lifestyle changes. After spending most of her career as a case manager, Rodriguez recently took on a new job as a server at a restaurant, which helps her get more activity every day. She’s tried to improve her diet, which has been hard because “I’m a big ice cream girl,” she says. “But I am trying.” More impactful than her diet was her genetic predisposition, she learned. Murphy helped her connect the dots to her family history, including her mother’s history of heart issues. The other major factor for Rodriguez was smoking cigarettes. “Now the mission is to completely quit smoking,” she says, adding that so far she’s been able to cut down from three packs per week to just one. After a heart attack, Murphy says, “we often talk about how every setback is an opportunity in some way.” Jessica Rodriguez and her daughter. For Rodriguez, that includes sharing her experience with others who might not connect their symptoms to a heart attack. “I always envisioned a heart attack as me hitting the floor and (my life) being over,” she says. “I didn’t picture me being home cooking the next day. That can be the reality now.” In particular, she wants others to know that heart attacks in women can come with subtle signs — including jaw pain. For men and women, the most common heart attack symptom is chest pain. But it doesn’t always feel like pain — sometimes it’s more of a tightness, pressure or discomfort. And women are more likely to experience subtler symptoms like back or jaw pain, like Rodriguez did, as well as fatigue, lightheadedness and cold sweat. “I’m not really the poster child for heart health, but I can tell you that I am a walking PSA,” Rodriguez says. As a single mother, she hopes to set a good example for her 18-year-old daughter. “I hope she sees that our pain is valid” and that she knows her own body, Rodriguez says. “I gave myself a million excuses not to call 911, and if I had listened to that part of my brain, I would have been dead,” Rodriguez adds. “Never be embarrassed. If we don’t have our help, we have none.” This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY: What Happens When Your Kids Become Teenagers? Adam Scott Tells Adam Brody His 1 Takeaway The 1 Lesson Kathie Lee Gifford Taught Her Kids — That They’re Now Teaching Their Own Children Elon Musk’s 14 kids: What to know about his children and their mothers ...read more read less