January 14, 1985

The number of confirmed cases of Lyme disease - a tick-borne infection that can cause recurring arthritis - set a record last year in New York State, according to health officials. Authorities said 434 cases have been confirmed by laboratory tests for 1984 in New York State, primarily in the New York City suburbs of Westchester and Putnam Counties and Long Island. In 1983, the state reported 168 cases. Dr. Jorge Benach, a scientist with the State Health Department and an assistant professor of pathology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, called it ''a suburban disease'' and said Westchester had experienced ''an unprecedented explosion of cases'' in 1984.

Two schoolteachers, four drug addicts, a retired opera singer, a college student, a butcher, a former police officer, three housekeepers, a homeless alcoholic, a wealthy executive, three dressmakers, a retired longshoreman, a convicted thief and 123 other patients died in one month at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center. Some of these men and women died without warning. But nearly half spent weeks knowing that death was imminent. And some died only after doctors, nurses, hospital attorneys and families - ill equipped to deal with the agonizing ethical issues - found themselves having to choreograph the precise time and manner for life to end. Years ago death was a statement of fact; today it has become a dilemma of agonizing choices. That is true not just in a few well-publicized cases, but also for ordinary people in ordinary circumstances.

Forty years ago, a small girl named Kay Kaufman accompanied her mother to the Dohany Synagogue in the Budapest ghetto, bringing food to fellow Jews who were interned there by the Nazis. Behind the synagogue, in what had been a flower-filled courtyard, the bodies of Jews who had starved to death or been executed lay in heaps, their burial prohibited by the Nazis. ''I remember the colored stones in the courtyard,'' said Miss Kaufman, a 49- year-old writer who now lives in Forest Hills, Queens, ''and I remember the bodies lined up like logs.'' Hungarian Government Offer These grim memories, and happier ones of bar mitzvahs and weddings, were revived yesterday as 150 Hungarian Jews gathered in Manhattan to begin a fund-raising drive for the restoration of synagogues and cemeteries in their native country. An offer of matching funds has been made by the Hungarian Government, which was represented at yesterday's ceremony by its Ambassador to the United States, Vencel Hazi.

MONDAY, JANUARY 14, 1985 International The Soviet Foreign Minister said Soviet-American negotiations on nuclear missiles would be impossible if they were separated from talks on space weapons. In a Soviet television interview that followed his meeting in Geneva last week with Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko rejected any effort by Washington to shift emphasis in future negotiations from outer space to strategic and medium- range missiles. (Page A1, Column 6.) Brazil's return to full democracy will take a big step tomorrow when the Electoral College chooses the country's first civilian President since the army seized power in 1964. (A1:5.)

Outside, it was raining hard. In the locker room, Don Shula glanced at Dan Marino, then a rookie, and pointed to a few plays listed on the Miami Dolphins' game plan that 1983 day in Baltimore. ''We won't use these plays now,'' the coach said. ''How come?'' the rookie quarterback asked. ''It's raining too hard,'' the coach replied.