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“The H2O is not here yet, and we have dual some-more floors and a roof,” Mr. Cowen, 51, removed revelation them, as everybody stood in his first-floor studio apartment. “It’s not time to panic. Even if a H2O gets in here, we’re still not going to panic, given that’s how people get hurt.”

This levelheadedness seems to surprise his opinion about his illnesses — spinal stenosis, diabetes, hypertension and heart problems. Mr. Cowen has been to a handling room enough, he said, that he has grown a “shtick”:

“I contend to a doctors, ‘Listen adult — Rule No. 1: we don’t wish to hear “Oops!”

“ ‘Rule No. 2: we don’t wish to hear: “Dr. Brown, we haven’t seen anything like this given med school.” ’ ”

Nonetheless, Mr. Cowen’s illnesses have led to his descending about $8,400 behind in his rent; he could face eviction record commencement subsequent month.

Mr. Cowen, a advisor during John V. Lindsay Wildcat Academy, a licence school for at-risk youth, was innate in Washington Heights in Manhattan though grew adult with dual siblings in Portsmouth, Ohio.

Mr. Cowen’s father owned a pallet-making business located in Portsmouth and Columbus, Ohio. The business thrived until a categorical plant in Portsmouth burnt to a ground, he said.

The family eventually perceived gratification benefits.

Mr. Cowen perceived a bachelor’s grade in psychology from a Ohio State University, and another in domestic scholarship from Antioch College. He went to Los Angeles after his five-year matrimony finished in divorce. In 2000, an online attribute brought him to New York, and when a attribute ended, he stayed.

In 2007, he began feeling “a rawness down my spine.” An M.R.I. suggested that he had spinal stenosis, a squeezing of a spinal mainstay that puts vigour on a cord. He had medicine to mislay a square of bone from his vertebrae to soothe pressure, he said.

In Jun 2010, he began feeling sick, and so run-down that he frequently missed work. When his ill days and vacation days were used adult and he could not work, he had no income. About 4 months later, he had a heart attack, and had stents implanted. Because he had worked sporadically, he had depressed $3,300 behind in his lease and utilities, he said. Within 9 months, he had recovered financially, he said.

“Around early tumble of final year, we became weaker and weaker,” Mr. Cowen said. He tired his vacation and ill days and again began descending behind on his lease and bills. He pronounced he did not find medical caring given incapacity payments would not be adequate for him to make his rent. Being out of a sanatorium authorised him to work, if usually intermittently.

“I popped children’s aspirin like M M’s only to keep a blood flowing,” he said, though eventually he went to a hospital, where he found out he indispensable heart medicine — a triple bypass. He also found out that he had hypertension and diabetes.

Now, Mr. Cowen is behind during work, perplexing to keep adult with his lease and to compensate his landlord additional any month to move his lease current. He pronounced he was relieved when he perceived assistance from a Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, a customer group of UJA-Federation of New York, one of a organizations upheld by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. Met Council drew $1,387 from a account to assistance him compensate superb electric and heating bills.

Mr. Cowen is requesting to several sources for ways to compensate a behind rent, though he pronounced that shortly his landlord competence have to trigger eviction proceedings.

And while he acknowledges that infrequently a whole conditions “feels like a residence of cards,” he does not feel contemptible for himself. “It’s not surprising right now,” he said. “In this country, operative people are mostly one medical disaster divided from financial ruin.”

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