For Suzanne Morley, art began as a way to cope with an illness that often left her admitted to hospital for days and weeks at a time.

In the still hours of the night when her medication was making it difficult to sleep, she would pull out her iPad and start doing abstract art.

“It helps to calm and focus me,” she said. “I take a blank canvas and create hand-drawn digital art. I work with emotion and feeling. Art speaks a universal language.”

She now has a collection of more than 170 designs that she hopes to sell to raise money for her mounting medical costs.

“I want to share the work and sell limited-edition prints,” she said. “The theme is hope and resilience.”

Her plan is to offer 35 prints of each design, oversee the printing process and put the proceeds towards medical costs.

The designs are bright and detailed, with each one carrying a story.

“I want to talk about how creativity can help you cope in adversity,” she said.

Ms Morley thought selling her work would also be a good way to raise awareness of respiratory health.

She was healthy and fit, regularly cycling, running, playing tennis and skiing until 2019 when she hit her early fifties.

“I was going through perimenopause and a stressful time in my life,” she said.

She developed what she thought was a chest infection.

“It felt like I was drowning,” she said. “I was gasping for air.”

Her breathing troubles did not go away. Eventually, doctors found she had severe eosinophilic asthma, a rare subtype that impacts roughly 5 per cent to 10 per cent of asthmatics. Eosinophils are a white blood cell made in the bone marrow. They come into play to fight pathogens. They can be helpful, but in excess can cause persistent inflammation and damage to organs.

“In my case, my lungs are the battleground,” Ms Morley said.

Her asthma attacks became more frequent and severe.

Eosinophilic asthma has caused repeated hospital stays and disruptions to her daily life. She had roughly ten hospital admissions in an 18-month period. During some of her more serious episodes her blood oxygen levels fell below 90 per cent.

Treatment has included oxygen, IV magnesium, high-dose steroids and respiratory physiotherapy to clear thick mucus, but they come with a price.

“I put on about 50lb since I have been on steroids,” she said. “That has an impact on my health as well because of pre-diabetes. They have to monitor my adrenal glands. A side effect of the steroids is also bruising.”

Biologic injections are one option she is trying but they are not working well for her.

“They cost between $3,000 to $4,000 for a single injection,” she said. “I am on the Government Health Insurance Plan. That takes up my entire allowance for the year and I need one injection a month. I also have a lot of other prescriptions I have to fill as well as nebulisers.”

Doctors are still trying to figure out if there is an underlying reason why she has developed some severe asthma.

“Why is my bone marrow producing an excess number of these white blood cells?” she said. “Is there something else going on? Is there another bone marrow-related condition? There are other things to consider like hyper eosinophilic syndrome, cancers and parasites.”

Hypereosinophilic syndrome is a rare group of disorders defined by persistently high levels of eosinophils in the blood and tissues, leading to inflammation and organ damage.

That means that she has to see not only a pulmonologist, but also a haematologist, an immunologist, a gastroenterologist and a cardiologist.

“There is also an ear, nose and throat element,” she said.

Ms Morley was working in the corporate world when she received her diagnosis. Juggling her medical condition and full-time work became too much and she had to give up her job last November.

Friendships have also faded away.

“I can’t accept invites because I never know if I’m going to be well enough, or I cancel last minute because I’m not feeling well enough,” she said.

She has considered living abroad in countries with socialised medicine, but her grown children are in Bermuda and she would not have a support network.

She uses humour to get through hospital stays, joking about treating them like a spa visit.

“I savour the small things more than I ever did before,” she said. “Live with compassion, for yourself and for others, because we never know what someone else is going through.”

Ms Morley wanted to share her story because many people are unaware of eosinophilic asthma.

“I do not know anyone else in Bermuda that has it,” she said. “However, I do know of others who are receiving biologic injections for severe asthma.”

• For more information, see her Instagram page, Susie D_Designs