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  • A North Jersey father had all four limbs amputated to save his life from a severe infection.
  • His community has raised over $370,000 to help with medical expenses and home renovations.
  • Chris Mayorga is undergoing procedures to be fitted with prosthetics and hopes to regain mobility.

With her husband barely conscious in a hospital bed as an infection tore through his body, Nicole Mayorga asked him if he wanted to live.

Chris Mayorga nodded. The 44-year-old father of two couldn’t speak because he was intubated.

She explained to him that doctors would need to amputate his arms and legs for him to have a chance. Could he live like that?

He paused and nodded again.

One day later in March 2025, surgeons at The Valley Hospital in Paramus removed Mayorga’s arms above the elbows and his legs above the knee. 

It was a lifesaving act — and as life-altering as any medical procedure could possibly be.

Story continues below photo gallery

And it began a long journey for Chris. With the help of family, friends and a community in a small Bergen County town, he has begun to adapt to a new life without limbs carrying the hope that he can regain some mobility and function with the latest generation of prosthetics.

Quadruple amputations are extremely rare — one study from Japan show they accounted for 0.02% of 5,500 amputations over a 30-year period. As a result, there is limited guidance on the most effective treatment and rehabilitation. Chris’ case is one of the most challenging seen even by doctors who specialize in amputations and recovery.

Advances in prosthetics and bionics have allowed people who have lost multiple limbs to gain back varying levels of mobility and the ability to do day-to-day tasks on their own.

But it also takes grit.

“His determination to get through this is absolutely remarkable,” said Dr. Omri Ayalon, an orthopedic surgeon who operated on Chris. “You meet Chris, you spend time with Chris, and you realize how much you have to work on yourself to be as good a person as he is.”

Husband, father of two, bio tech exec

A native of Paterson, Chris was valedictorian of his class at DePaul Catholic High School and went on to earn accounting and finance degrees at the University of Pennsylvania. Along the way he met Nicole and they had two children Tyler, 10, and Maddie, 6.

They settled in tiny Midland Park. Like so many suburban parents, they began developing roots in the community once their kids were school age. There was basketball, baseball and flag football for Tyler and the cheer squad for Maddie along with the beefsteak fundraisers at the local firehouse.

“It felt so small compared to what we were used to,” Nicole said. “Everybody knows your story. Some people hate that, but it can be a good thing for others.”

Life was good. Chris’ career was an upward swing having become the controller at a bio-tech company in recent years, which allowed Nicole to devote her time to their family. “It was just a normal life that you see everybody having,” Chris said. “Then it changed.”

In February 2025, Chris came down with a deep, wet cough that just wouldn’t go away. He started coughing up phlegm that became dark brown after a few days. Home tests showed he was positive for the flu, negative for COVID.

Chris wasn’t too worried. He had been relatively healthy his whole life, with no underlying conditions. This would soon pass, he thought.

But then Chris began to have trouble breathing. He felt weak. “I never took sick days before and here I was feeling like I was on my deathbed,” he said.

He went to an urgent care center where a clinician listened to him breath through a stethoscope. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. No cultures were taken. There was no chest x-ray. The same scenerio played out when Chris saw his primary care physician the next day.

Hours later, Chris was weezing so bad he couldn’t go to sleep.

Nicole drove him to The Valley Hospital’s emergency department in Paramus in the middle of the night. The experience was a blur. Chris remembers the nurses having worried looks on their faces. He remembers an oxygen mask going on his face and blasting out air.

It was the last thing he remembered for two months.

Flu morphed into bacterial pneumonia

Nicole had gone home to prepare the kids for school before Chris had lost consciousness. “I thought he’d get a steroid shot, they would monitor him for a few hours and then they would send him home,” she said. Instead, she got a call from Valley telling her that Chris’ lungs were functioning so poorly he would have to be intubated.

Chris’ condition declined over the next two weeks.

His flu had morphed into bacterial pneumonia. The infection was spreading through his body. His kidneys were not functioning well and he was put on dialysis. His lungs were struggling to work and his blood was not circulating properly, especially to his extremities.

He developed a blood infection and then soon sepsis — an often fatal response to an infection, in which organs begin to fail.

One night the medical team thought Chris might die. The family signed a do-not-resuscitate order. But by morning, Chris’ vital signs somehow looked better. The sun came through the hospital room window and formed the shadow of a cross on the floor. Nicole snapped a quick picture of it. “That was a huge sign of hope,” she said.

Doctors used an experimental CytoSorb machine to clean Chris’ blood. It helped. His white blood cell count went up.

But the damage was already immense. His right arm developed gangrene. A full body scan showed poor blood flow. His hand was peeling so much it looked like it was dipped in wax. His legs looked mummified.

Two choices — amputation or death

There were two choices. Amputate Chris’ arms and legs to stop the spread of infection. Or do nothing and let him die.

Nicole woke Chris up. She tried to tell him as gently as possible what he was facing. “I told him, ‘If you want to live we need to get rid of those arms and legs,’” she said. “Can you live with that?”

Chris nodded. A doctor cautioned Nicole about what life may be like for Chris going forward.

“When my husband comes back into this hospital and shakes your hand, you’re going to know it was the right decision,” she recalled saying.

The surgery was performed the next day, almost three weeks after Chris walked into the emergency department. After 22 days at Valley, Chris was transferred to Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan, which was better equipped to handle Chris’ recovery.

Chris regained consciousness in late April. He remembers having a vivid dream where he was writing a term paper in college, but the words kept disappearing on the paper. When he awoke, he was covered in a gown. He didn’t know where he was.

He tried moving his arms and legs. Nothing happened. Nicole was there and explained to him that his arms and legs were gone. Chris nodded his head.

“I just thought, ‘If this is real and it’s not a bad dream, then there’s no reset button,’” he said. “I just have to move forward. There’s nothing else I can do.”

Homecoming after seven months

Chris’ kidneys were the first to come back to health. Then his lungs improved to the point that Chris was taken off the ventilator. On Easter, Nicole brought Tyler and Maddie to see their dad for the first time in two months. She had told them what had happened and prepped them by showing videos of amputees.

When they arrived at Chris’ bedside, the kids were more taken aback that their dad had lost all his hair. “They just wanted to see him so badly, it really didn’t matter what he looked like,” Nicole said. “I always told them, ‘Your dad’s a bad ass.’ And now here’s proof.”

Then in September, Chris went home for the first time in seven months.

And the little town of Midland Park threw a big homecoming. By then, almost everyone in town had heard of Chris’ story. And on one warm September day, it seemed like everyone drove by the Mayorgas’ house in a makeshift parade reminiscent of high school graduation celebrations at the height of the pandemic.

Chris sat on the porch in his wheelchair and raised his shoulder to wave to the passersby with what remained of his arm.

“The kids told their friends, ‘Hey do you want to see my dad? He’s a celebrity. He’s a bad ass,’” Nicole said, laughing.

Many in the town had already helped raise more than than $370,000 for the family to help with some expenses, including renovating their house with ramps, installing wider doorways and creating a more accessible bathroom. A local architect waived his fees when he heard of Chris’ story.

But the Mayorgas don’t plan on much more because they fully expect Chris to be out of his motorized wheelchair and walking with prosthetics in due time. In January, Chris went to NYU Langone in New York for a second round of osseointegration surgery on his legs to prepare him for prosthetics.

Because his case is so rare, doctors at NYU’s Center for Amputation Reconstruction are using Chris to help develop treatment plans for others like him.

“With Chris, we’re learning what works, what doesn’t work,” said Ayalon, co-director of the center. “His experience is going to help other people who have had four amputations.”

Chris expects to get his first set of legs in May after months of building strength with weight-bearing exercises. He is documenting his recovery on social media and hopes one day to walk out on a stage as a motivational speaker.

For now, Chris relies on Nicole, hired aides and his parents and in-laws who live nearby. Voice commands on his smartphone allow him to control the lights in the house, the thermostat, the television and more. But for even the simplest task — like removing an irritating eyelash from his eye — Nicole has to step in.

“I don’t kid myself. I’m going to need some level of care for the rest of my life,” Chris said. “I won’t get back to 100% independence but I’m going work hard to get as close as I can.”

Waiting for prosthetics, but not everything is on hold

There are old routines that are memories — for now. There are no more football tosses in the backyard with Tyler. No running after Maddie. Chris hopes to regain those as prosthetics become more and more advanced.

But not everything is on hold.

Chris has always loved drawing. He would often trace cartoon and comic book characters for his kids to color. It was one of their favorite activities together that they thought may be lost.

To the amazement of his family, friends and medical team, Chris continues to make intricate pictures despite not having the fingers to hold a pen or the wrist and elbow to make his normal movements.

With a felt-tip pen strapped to his upper arm, Chris has drawn the likes of Batman, The Incredible Hulk and Mickey and Minnie Mouse for his kids. He has drawn a finely detailed bouquet of roses for his nurses at NYU as a thank you for their care.

His doctor, Ayalon, brought several of Chris’ drawings home with him. “I save them as a reminder of what’s possible,” he said.

On the anniversary of his trip to the emergency room, Chris drew a picture for himself. It’s of Christ carrying the cross.

Below it, Chris wrote a note: “God only gives you what you can handle. You are brave and strong. You endure pain so others don’t have to. Keep inspiring others. Faith over fear.”