"I have epilepsy," I said. I said it flatly, without drama or flourish or mystery.
(There's other stuff in the middle here), then the boyfriend says, "Jesus fucking Christ," he said, "This is too much."

"Yes it is," I said. (end)

Maybe because I have epilepsy, I can see the part about saying it flatly - I mean, after having it your whole life, it just isn't that interesting or dramatic. It just is. The reaction of the boyfriend though is almost funny. It's like he's got this mid-nineteenth or eighteenth century view of epilepsy that involves being a mouthing idiot and biting your tongue off (highly unlikely, but given a lot of press). I mean, "Jesus fucking Christ"!!!!! he says.

It's like Lifetime TV. I almost expected the doctor in the white coat to walk into the room where the woman is on her deathbed, and her perfectly made-up mother and sister and sitting in nice, peach-colored chairs with their perfect make-up and pocketbooks with FDS spray and nude pantyhose, all smiles for the "poor, dying girl" and then the doctor walks in and says, "It's bad ... Very bad ..." but the heroine takes it heroically, her chin quivers, but smiles through the pain, and then the close up. Cut to commercial.

Slater does a good job of presenting is actually a text book example of a temporal lobe patient. The hallmarks of temporal lobe epilepsy, those written up in JAMA and known by neurologists worldwide, are pretty fascinating because they're just so weird and so codified. All, are all here in Lying. There is the fascination with the trappings of religion, which is different from a genuine interest in religion in that this has to do with ritual and stuff, or as my minister once said, "You just like the clothes," which was true.

There is the way she relates to Van Gogh long before she knows how they are kindred, which in an of itself does mean you are epileptic, of course - millions love Van Gogh and they're not epileptic, but it's in the intensity and the seeming understanding she has of the way he saw the world; that it's how she sees the world. There's the awful sense of dread, often just before a seizure, and the running theme of morbid preoccupation with and fear of death ("I saw a hearse drive by, with blue curtains in the windows. I started to wonder if the spirits of dead people stood under trees and waited to grab you.").

That Slater is a coy at times that she seems to be playing with us and enjoying the game - knowing that we are hooked. When she says she lies, she means it. Maybe she has TLE and doubts the diagnosis (very common), despite the sure spikes and deep valleys printed in blue ink on long, paper-thread of the EEG read out as it unfurls. Maybe her EEG film showed nothing epileptiform. Who knows.