Letters of Discredit

A pregnant woman puts her body and soul in others’ hands. Once she goes into labor, she goes into a delivery room expecting what expectant mothers expect--a clean room, a competent staff and a considerate doctor who doesn’t carve his initials into her with a scalpel after she gives birth.

Liana Gedz apparently got no better than two out of three. A doctor herself, Gedz is a 31-year-old dentist who on Sept. 7, 1999, at a New York medical center, had her baby delivered by a Dr. Allan Zarkin, 61, never suspecting that Dr. Zarkin might end up branding her like a calf.

Now known as “Dr. Zorro” in medical circles, Zarkin is being sued by Gedz for allegedly using a surgical instrument to carve an “A” and a “Z” into his patient’s abdomen. Zarkin evidently admired his own work so much that he couldn’t resist putting his personal insignia on it, the way a building contractor might do with wet cement. The doctor didn’t simply stitch up Linda Gedz; he embroidered her.

At least this was the account of eyewitnesses, according to published reports. After he delivered Gedz’s baby by caesarean section and confirmed that mother and child were doing fine, Zarkin is reported to have stood over Gedz and said, “I did such a beautiful job, I’ll initial it.”

A woman having a baby is supposed to get a sonogram, not a monogram. Gedz has understandably announced that she is filing a $5-million lawsuit against the physician due to his handiwork. She is also suing Beth Israel Medical Center, which suspended Zarkin’s right to practice immediately after learning of this new medical procedure, the skin autograph.

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What a horrific case this is. A woman occasionally files charges or a lawsuit against a doctor for improper behavior while she was under anesthesia, and there have always been various malpractice claims or allegations of general quackery. No doctor-patient relationship is ever entirely clear-cut.

But this, this is something out of a helpless patient’s worst nightmare. For it isn’t every day that a doctor deigns to use his scalpel on a patient’s torso the way a tanner might use an awl on a strap of leather. Not since the 15 minutes of fame afforded John and Lorena Bobbitt has there been a story so destined to make so much of America’s flesh crawl.

David Letterman would be having a field day with this one in his television monologues, were he not under a doctor’s care now himself.

The story of “Dr. Zorro” is one of those oddball events that will be discussed endlessly in the coming weeks, with a couple’s blessed event being turned into a comedian’s nonsense. Your only wish is to hold a healthy baby; instead it’s you who ends up being held in ridicule.

There is definitely nothing funny in any of this for Liana Gedz, who is pleased that her baby is in sound health but is otherwise incensed. In an interview, Gedz said she feels “like I was raped” and is ashamed to undress in front of her husband, now that another man’s initials are engraved on her stomach.

Gedz has no cause to feel this way. Many a man has gone through a marriage permanently illustrated with a tattoo that reads “Rosie,” inked onto his chest or limb, acquired prior to his falling in love with a woman not named Rosie.

Tattooees see a tattoo artist for that express purpose, however. They wouldn’t go to a dentist’s office to get a wisdom tooth pulled and then expect to wake up in the chair, check out their gums in a mirror and find the dentist’s initials.

One can hardly fault dentist Gedz for her feeling of mortification, though. She had absolutely no objection to being left with a caesarean scar--and in fact women who hide these should display them proudly, as badges of honor--but the last thing on Earth she expected was for a doctor to do unto her with a knife pretty much what Brutus did to Caesar.

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So how could anyone do the terrible thing that was done to this woman? One would assume that this had to be something more than a whim, and one would be correct in that assumption. Or at least this is the explanation that comes from the doctor’s lawyer, who has let it be known that Dr. Zarkin is now seeing a couple of doctors himself--a neurologist and a psychiatrist.

According to attorney Kenneth Platzer, something “clicked on and off in his brain” when Zarkin made his mark. He says the doctor suffers from a frontal lobe disorder that causes inappropriate behavior and abrupt personality changes . . . not the qualifications a pregnant woman is looking for in her doctor, one might add editorially here.

Zarkin’s baby-delivering days are likely over. A nurse or two also might need to explain why, when a doctor in an operating room announced his intention to autograph his work, no one made a greater effort to intercede on the patient’s behalf.

A pregnant woman does not merely place her life in someone else’s hands; she places two lives there. Liana Gedz expected the sound of a slap and a healthy baby’s cry. She ended up wanting to slap the doctor.

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com