After my multiple myeloma diagnosis two years ago, I started my bi-weekly chemotherapy regimen.  I quickly developed a routine.

Tuesdays and Fridays, I would take a ten-minute subway ride from our home in lower Manhattan to Greenwich Village, spend an hour at the clinic getting my “infusion,” and then stop off at one of the many great food stores at the cavernous Chelsea Market, a block from the clinic.

I’d then hop back on the subway and get to work, usually by 11 a.m.  I was upbeat.  This seemed bearable.

An early hint that I might be involved with more than just the physical side effects that I had been warned about occurred a few weeks after beginning the treatments.

One Friday evening, I slipped into an open space on a very crowded subway car just as the doors were closing.  I found myself next to a passenger who was very visibly distressed at being pressed against other travelers.  The car was too crowded for me to move away from him.  I gave a glare back at him to warn him to stay away and pretended to wander into an anonymous reverie.

As I pushed by him to leave the subway car at the next station, the angry passenger gave me a quick shove.  I lost my balance and ended up with one of my legs fallen into the gap between the subway car and the platform, the other stretched straight out on the platform itself.

Several passengers waiting to get in the car immediately lent a hand and lifted me up – I never could have worked my jammed leg out from the gap without help.   I limped off and started to shake, not just from the pain and the danger.

I sensed that my judgment had been way off: not only should I not have squeezed into the crowded car, I never should have made direct eye contact in a crowded subway car with anyone who appears so odd.

I stopped limping a few days later, and my scraped leg quickly healed.  However, a couple of weeks later I had another hint that my judgment was amiss.

On yet another Friday evening after my chemotherapy, I grew frustrated with a close friend late at work when I was eager to leave.  He kept changing his mind on some issue we were discussing, and I ended up yelling at him to make up his mind and slammed down the phone.

When I apologized to him on Monday, he told me to forget about it – he told me his wife had gone far more berserk the previous year when she had been prescribed a light dose of steroids, and he knew that my doses were much heavier.

But this event really shook me up.  My job as the legal counselor to the New York City Buildings Commissioner was high pressure – New York City real estate developers and their contractors and labor unions were constantly calling, as was the press office, community groups, elected officials, and the mayor’s office.

I couldn’t afford to lose my cool.  In addition, the physical side effects were getting significant.  I needed a nap almost every day.  A stem cell transplant appeared to be on the horizon in the late fall anyway.

For the first time, I began to seriously think about retirement  -- something I had given very little thought to.

A year and a half and a few "exciting" incidents later, I know I made the right decision to retire.  All these incidents were too odd and numerous to be by happenstance. New York seems not to be a laid back place.