WWAJD?*

*What Would Angelina Jolie Do?

I’ve seen my dentist nine times lately, give or take, in the course of having a tooth crowned. Because the one crown I already had, from many years ago, looks really terrible—fortunately, it’s toward the back—I wanted to make sure the new crown, which is much closer to the front, would be pleasing to the eye.

My dentist (the same one I’ve had the entire time I’ve been in San Francisco; I’m very fond of him) assured me that since the new crown would be quite visible, aesthetics would be paramount, so I was quite chagrined to see that the new crown's color didn't match that of neighboring teeth particularly well and that it featured a faint gray line near my gums, which I knew would only get worse—it’s not like my gums cover more of my teeth with each passing year.

When you get a crown, they start by taking a mold of your teeth, and then reducing the tooth under treatment, in a matter of moments, to a horrid-looking little brown stump. A temporary crown is made on the spot to protect the stump's shrieking nerve endings while the real crown is constructed.

My temporary crown looked fantastic, so I stopped worrying about what the real crown would look like and was all the more surprised when it looked not so good. It turns out that the mold used to construct the temporary crown does not figure in the creation of the permanent item. Instead, they use a generic tooth for whichever position it is—front tooth, canine, molar.

I was hoping that maybe when I put my night guard in and clenched my teeth together as tightly as possible all night, as is my habit, it might push the crown up just enough to cover that line, but it turned out that I couldn’t put my night guard in at all—it didn’t fit over the crown.

I made an appointment to have my night guard adjusted (in the end, we're having to make a whole new night guard), and then I got to wondering why Angelina Jolie doesn’t have gray lines near her gums. When I got to my dentist’s office, I asked, “If I were Angelina Jolie and my teeth absolutely had to look perfect and I had a million dollars to spend, what would they do?”

He said she would probably get an all-porcelain crown, which would look very nice, but not be all that durable. Mentioning Angelina Jolie must have impressed upon him how deadly serious I am about my teeth, and he said he’d send the crown back and try to get the color adjusted and the gray line fixed.

First he had to get it off again. It didn’t budge right away, so he softened up a sticky, squishy piece of sweetened gunk that mimics the kind of thing you’re not supposed to eat if you have crowns and had me bite down on it with the crowned tooth.

He said that when I snapped open my jaw, the crown would come off. I said, “Either that or it will pull the opposite tooth right out of my head.” He said that if the opposite tooth was also crowned, yes, it could be tricky, though if the opposite crown was permanently cemented down, the one with the temporary cement should be the one to come loose.

“Hopefully,” I said.

“Hopefully,” he agreed, with a merry laugh.

The tech redid my crown and it still didn't look great, so we started again from the ground up and now it looks perfect. The color is just right and there is no gray line at the gum line whatsoever. I would defy anyone to identify which tooth has the crown, at least until my gums recede further.

It looks so good, I think I'll probably have the rest of my teeth crowned.