Fit and active at age 25, Madelyne Morris started to struggle through workouts at the gym. Her muscles felt leaden and stiff, and she stopped getting the usual endorphin rush.
“It was like, overnight, I went from being able to hike 12 miles for fun to barely being able to walk two miles on a treadmill,” she said.
A cascade of troubling signs ensued: She had a hard time getting up in the morning. She gained weight, and her periods started coming every two weeks. Her mouth began to tingle and feel numb, sensations she soon developed in her hands and legs. Her knuckles became so painful, it was difficult to grip the steering wheel. Chunks of her chest-length brown hair inexplicably fell out.
Tests revealed Morris had low blood sugar, which typically occurs in people with diabetes when they take too much insulin. But she didn’t have diabetes, and doctors couldn’t find an underlying cause for her symptoms despite ordering numerous tests. One day, after she woke up confused and barely able to speak, emergency room doctors said she should see a therapist for stress.
Months later, when she took a drug on her own that probably exacerbated her condition and caused her to pass out, medics had to be called to rouse her. She returned to the ER, and a doctor finally identified the source of her problem. Nearly two years after the onset of her malaise, she was treated for a life-threatening condition.
“I cried happy tears,” she said of getting the diagnosis. “I was not this crazy person manically searching for answers.”
Tingling and hair loss
Morris, who grew up in Upstate New York, moved at age 18 to Nashville to attend college and ended up working in liquor industry sales.
In October 2023, at 24, she met her boyfriend at a bluegrass festival. A year later, they moved in together and she got a promotion with a big pay raise. With a cadre of friends, her adulthood was unfolding as she wanted — except she didn’t feel well.
“My life was on cloud nine, but my health was rapidly deteriorating,” she said.
After a few months of lethargy and straining to exercise, Morris saw her primary care provider, a nurse practitioner, in June 2024. He suspected a low vitamin D level or an iron deficiency, which could impede the thyroid gland and cause fatigue. But tests showed her levels were normal. A pelvic ultrasound to check for ovarian cysts found nothing wrong.
One night, as Morris tasted chili she had made, her mouth started to tingle. She wondered: Was she allergic to cilantro? In the following weeks, she developed numbness and prickling in her hands and thighs. Then her joints begin to ache, in her hands, knees and especially her feet. Did she need better shoes?
In September 2024, the day after curling her hair to go to a concert, she showered and discovered a bald spot on the right side of the top of her head. The next month, her boyfriend noticed another bare patch. Meanwhile, her joints hurt so much it was hard to move.
“I felt like the Tin Man,” Morris said.
She returned to her nurse practitioner in December 2024. He noted that in June, her A1C test — which measures average blood sugar levels over the past three months — had been 4.4 percent, lower than the normal range of 4.8 percent to 5.6 percent. He tested it again, and this time it was 4.3 percent. Morris seemed to have hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, along with joint pain, hair loss and unusually frequent periods.
Suspecting a hormone disorder or autoimmune disease, the nurse practitioner referred her to specialists.
Despair and discovery
An endocrinologist, or hormone specialist, checked if Morris’s adrenal glands were producing too little cortisol, which can cause low blood sugar. The test was normal. The doctor gave her a continuous glucose monitor, which often recorded low levels.
Multiple tests by a rheumatologist, or autoimmune disease specialist, were negative for conditions such as lupus, Lyme disease, parvovirus and rheumatoid arthritis.
In March 2025, Morris woke up one morning in a cold sweat. Disoriented, she tried to get ready for work, but she couldn’t control her arms to put her contact lenses in or her makeup on. When her boyfriend checked on her, she was unable to speak in full sentences.
“Can’t think, can’t think,” she said, banging on the kitchen countertop in frustration.
Fearing a stroke, he took her to the ER, where she became uncharacteristically belligerent and refused to get out of his truck. Police placed her in emergency detention, and doctors ordered a CT scan of her head, which was normal. An ER doctor determined she had “an acute stress reaction due to multiple stressors,” and a psychiatrist recommended outpatient therapy. Her low blood sugar went away after she was given fluids, doctors noted.
In July 2025, her A1C measured below 4.0 percent, which is considered very low. Another nurse practitioner ordered a CT scan of Morris’s abdomen and pelvis, and an MRI exam of her brain. Both were normal, according to the radiologists who read them. A neurologist said her episodes of confusion seemed to stem from low blood sugar.
By late September 2025, Morris became desperate. Her symptoms persisted and now included uterine cramping, which gynecologists couldn’t explain. By eating more to counteract her low blood sugar and not exercising as much as before, she had gained nearly 40 pounds. Through an online pharmacy, she bought tirzepatide, a GLP-1 agonist drug used to treat diabetes and obesity by impeding appetite. For four weeks, she injected herself with a small dose once a week.
She became even more incoherent in the mornings, with her boyfriend having to give her apple juice or glucose tablets to get her up. On the morning of Nov. 3, 2025, he could barely awaken her. He pricked her finger to check her glucose level. A normal reading is about 70 to 99 milligrams per deciliter. Hers was 28 mg/dL, which is dangerously low.
He called 911. Medics gave her intravenous dextrose to revive her. After going to the ER, she was admitted to Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital Midtown in Nashville, where she was seen by Cheryl Fassler, an endocrinologist. With Morris’s glucose level still low, at 40 mg/dL, Fassler ordered several blood tests. They showed that she was still producing significant amounts of insulin, which normally stops when blood sugar is low.
The results all but confirmed Fassler’s suspicion: Morris had an insulinoma, a rare tumor on her pancreas that was generating more insulin than her body needed. Left untreated, the growth could cause seizures, a coma and death, Fassler said. Insulinomas are estimated to occur in 1 to 4 people per million each year, usually in middle-aged adults. They are typically not cancerous, but they produce insulin uncontrollably instead of adjusting to the body’s glucose levels.
“They’re rogue,” Fassler said. “They don’t give a flip what the blood sugar level is.”
Treatment with complications
Initial efforts to find a tumor on imaging tests were elusive, adding to the puzzle of what was wrong. When a doctor inserted a flexible tube with a camera through Morris’s mouth to her pancreas, he thought he saw a suspicious lesion, but a biopsy was inconclusive.
Christopher Bowman, another endocrinologist, talked to a radiologist about ordering additional tests. The radiologist looked at the CT scan that had been deemed normal by another radiologist in July. He thought he saw a problematic mass. Bowman ordered a new CT scan, but it didn’t detect a mass. He also ordered an MRI, which in December showed a small insulinoma in the middle of Morris’s pancreas.
The tumor explained her months of fatigue, grogginess, confusion, tingling and difficulty speaking, Bowman said. Her excess insulin could have caused her irregular periods and cramping, and stress on her body from the relentless low blood sugar may have triggered the hair loss, he said.
In February, surgeon Kamran Idrees removed half of Morris’s pancreas, including the insulinoma, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The tumor was benign, and she tested negative for genetic conditions that increase the risk of insulinomas. Her glucose levels normalized, her symptoms resolved and she lost about 20 pounds in two months.
“My metabolism turned back on,” she said.
The procedure was not without complications. Morris suffered a pancreatic leak, or buildup of digestive enzymes produced by the organ, a risk that Idrees said is higher when operating on younger patients because their pancreases are softer and thicker. She required drains to the outside of her abdomen, where she developed an infection, and stents into her stomach.
Bowman said there’s a slight chance Morris could develop another insulinoma or the opposite problem: becoming diabetic, if the remaining half of her pancreas produces too little insulin.
“I’ve been watching to make sure she doesn’t have any signs,” Bowman said.
Morris, now 27, said she long blamed herself for her ailments, believing she had simply allowed herself to become unhealthy. Learning it was a tumor, outside of her control, was a relief, she said. She is grateful that her boyfriend watched over her and that her insurance gave her access to medical providers who eventually pinned down the problem.
“If circumstances had been different, I might not be here,” she said.
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