Ironman Athlete Patricia Salazar Says Surviving Cervical Cancer 'Gave Me Confidence' (Exclusive)

“I’m proud to talk about my cancer journey. I can do hard things, and cancer is just one of ’em,” Patricia Salazar tells PEOPLE

Three years ago Patricia Salazar was on top of the world. The then 31-year-old endurance athlete was in the best shape of her life — and just weeks away from competing in her first full Ironman race. Even better, she was in love and in a new relationship with fellow endurance athlete Aaron Toro (who would later become her husband).

“I was in such a good place,” she says. “I was so healthy. I was an Ironman.”

That all changed with one phone conversation on Oct. 7, 2021. She was sitting in the parking lot of her gym in Los Gatos, Calif., when her gynecologist called her on Zoom. Results from a routine biopsy Salazar had done several weeks earlier were back.

“She asked where I was and if there was someone I could go to,” recalls Salazar, now 34. “She said, ‘You have squamous cell carcinoma on your cervix.’ I couldn’t tell you what she said after that — it might as well have been gibberish — because all I heard was, ‘You have cancerous cells on your cervix.’ I called my mom, who was at work, and asked her to [meet me at] home right away.”

Salazar was diagnosed with stage 2B cervical cancer, and in December 2021 — after freezing her eggs — she underwent a full hysterectomy to remove her uterus, cervix, fallopian tubes and a lime-size tumor, followed by five weeks of radiation. Looking back, she admits, there were “things that might have been signs of cancer.”

Nearly a decade ago she’d tested positive for HPV (human papillomavirus) — a sexually transmitted infection that often causes cervical cancer. “But it was low-grade, and my ob-gyn said it wasn’t anything really to worry about,” recalls Salazar, who also experienced intermittent spotting, another telltale symptom, but attributed it to her intense training and high-stress competitions.

“I  thought  that  being irregular  as  an  athlete  was  a  regular thing,” adds the California native, who had also missed her regular Pap smear exams for more than two years because of COVID. “I’ve learned: Let a doctor tell you what’s okay. Don’t determine that for yourself.”

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Now, more than two years later, a cancer-free Salazar reflects on her hard-won ordeal with gratitude for the life lessons she’s learned.

“I feel confident in the way I handled my journey with cancer. It’s something I’m proud to talk about,” says Salazar, who lives with Toro, 29, and their Newfoundland poodle mix Bryce in Saratoga Springs, Utah.

She encourages women to advocate for themselves and for young people to get the HPV vaccine, which became available in 2006. It has since proven to be nearly 100 percent effective in preventing cervical cancer, as well as vulvar, vaginal, anal and other head and neck cancers. This year nearly 14,000 American women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer, and more than 4,000 women will lose their lives.

“The people currently in the 30-year-old range are the ones who missed out on the HPV vaccine,” says Dr. Christina Annunziata, senior vice president of Extramural Discovery Science at the American Cancer Society. “That’s where we’re seeing the most cancers. Once the vaccine was approved, they were already past the age at which it was most effective.”

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Salazar was born in the San Jose suburb of Los Gatos, to Gabe, 64, a construction company supervisor, and Kelly, 59, a small-business owner. The older of two daughters, she grew up playing tennis and riding rodeo, after her family moved to Gardnerville, Nev., an hour south of Reno.

“It was a very small rural town,” recalls Salazar. “We grew up on a ranch with horses and pigs and goats and chickens. But I always had this lust to leave.”

After graduating from high school in 2007, she was chosen to be a young ambassador for Rotary International in the coastal city of Halmstad, Sweden, and lived with a host family for a year. “It was amazing,” says Salazar.

Back in California, she attended Santa Clara University and studied political science. She worked in fundraising for the university before joining the Positive Coaching Alliance in 2020, a youth sports nonprofit where she’s now the director of national advancement.

While traveling for work, she’d always bring along a pair of running shoes for exercise. “I just wanted to stay fit,” says Salazar, who ran her first half marathon in 2013. “I had such a bad time on the clock that I thought, ‘I’ll have to try that again and do better.’ ”

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By 2017 she’d run three marathons and expanded her fitness routine to include swimming and biking, participating in her first half triathlon that same year. She entered her first half Ironman, a series of longer-distance triathlon races (consisting of a 1.2-mile swim, a 56-mile bike ride and a 13.1-mile run), the following summer, in 2018. “I fell in love with it,” she says.

Three years later she crossed paths with Toro during a trip to Bryce Canyon in Utah. She was hiking one of the canyon’s steep trails when Toro — who was on leave from the Navy and, as luck would have it, training for an Ironman competition — ran past her.

“I thought, ‘My God, he’s such a hunk!’ He looked like a Hemsworth brother,” recalls Salazar. “I had nothing to lose, so I hollered at him, ‘Hey, are you single?’ He turns around and goes, ‘Yeah’ — and the rest is history.”

The following morning they went jogging together in the canyons, then shared a ride to Salt Lake City. By the end of the four-hour drive, they’d decided to keep seeing each other.

“We were able to talk about so much during that car ride,” says Salazar. “I was attracted to her right off the bat,” adds Toro, who left that July on a six-month deployment to Spain — just three months before Salazar received her Pap smear results.

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Devastated, she called Toro in Spain to tell him about the diagnosis — and that, as a result, she might not be able to have children.

“I told him, ‘I love you, but if this isn’t the path that you want to walk with me, I will totally understand,’ ” she recalls. “And he said, ‘I didn’t commit to you because you could give me children. I committed to you because I love you.’ ”

On Nov. 15 Salazar began taking hormonal injections to hyperstimulate her ovaries, and two weeks later doctors retrieved five viable eggs. A month later Salazar underwent a six-hour surgery to remove her cervix, uterus and fallopian tubes.

“I was in a lot of pain, but I was eager to start living my life again,” says Salazar, who went home to her studio apartment in Los Gatos three days later to begin her recovery.

Shortly after, on Christmas Eve, Toro — who’d been granted a leave so he could be there for her surgery — proposed.

“I jumped off that couch and said, ‘Yes!’ ” recalls Salazar. “I hadn’t moved that fast in nine days!”

With a 30% chance of her cancer returning, in February 2022 Salazar began a five-week regimen of radiation sessions five times a week. The treatment caused extreme diarrhea, leaving her severely dehydrated, depleted and nauseated. “I could barely eat,” recalls Salazar, who received three blood transfusions in the last two weeks to bolster her strength. “I was really struggling, I was so sick.”

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Within a month of finishing the radiation, Salazar had regained some of her strength—and signed up for the Sea Otter Classic, a 30-mile bike race up 3,500 ft. of rough terrain in Monterey, Calif.

“I did terribly, and it took me forever,” she says. “But I remember being on the bike and saying to myself out loud, ‘This is who you were before cancer, and this is who you still are. You can do hard things — and cancer is just one of ’em.’ ”

On Sept. 2, 2022, Salazar and Toro were married in an intimate ceremony in Snow Canyon State Park in Utah, just a couple of hours away from Bryce Canyon, where they’d met 14 months earlier.

“After my cancer journey, I really wanted it to be about our love and everything that we had gone through,” says Salazar. “We invited four friends and read our own vows. It was so special.”

These days the newlyweds are making the most of married life — cooking together on weekends and hiking with their dog Bryce. Toro recently retired from the Navy and is now a tech account manager at a software company, while Salazar continues to pursue her nonprofit work.

Although her radiation treatments have put her in the early stages of menopause (she’s considering hormone replacement therapy), she and Toro are hoping to start a family via surrogate in the next year.

“We want to get things rolling sooner rather than later,” says Salazar, who’s also back to her intense daily workouts and running 30 miles a week. “Beating cancer was just one finish line. I’m the same version of myself that I was, I just have a longer story now.”

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