By 1999, Madison left her acting career and her family moved back to their home town in Kentucky. After repeated bouts of pneumonia and general ill-health, a chest X-ray revealed that she was suffering from restrictive cardiomyopathy, a condition that required her to receive a heart transplant. The then fifteen-year-old was on the donor waiting list for a short term before she was admitted to the Cleveland Clinic in March 2000, where she received the transplant.
...
Madison quickly recovered back to good health and, between concentrating on her school work and enjoying cheerleading in her extracurricular time, she began giving talks to various groups highlighting the importance of organ donation. After finishing at South Laurel High School, she then went to attend the University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg to study English before studying for her teaching credentials. Once graduating from university in summer 2006, Madison planned to begin a job teaching English to tenth grade children at George Rogers Clark High School, located in Winchester, Kentucky.
Just as her academic life flourished, her social life did as well. On July 8th, 2006, Madison married Brent Joseph Morris, a University of Kentucky medical student. The couple honeymooned in Hawaii for two weeks. A day after she returned, Madison fell ill and was admitted to the University of Kentucky Medical Center. On July 21, 2006, she died of a heart attack, only eight days shy of her twenty-second birthday.