Hemiplegic Migraine Navigator

MONTH 1

Recognition and Pattern Capture

Month 1 builds the Pattern Map, the first artifact of your Navigator Framework. The Pattern Map holds what reliably repeats in your body and what reliably repeats in how care settings respond to your episodes. By recording both in one place, you build a stable reference you carry across encounters — instead of reconstructing your situation each time.

The three Parts move in sequence:

  1. Name what recurs in your experience.
  2. See how different care settings process the same episode.
  3. Assemble both into your Pattern Map.

Each Part feeds the next. By the end, you have a Pattern Map (partial is expected) that holds recognition in a form you can return to.

You do not need to finish every section for the Pattern Map to be useful. A few reliable patterns are enough to begin.

See the month map


QUICK START

How to use Month 1

The three Parts are designed to be taken in order. Each one builds on material from the one before.

PACING

Move at a pace that fits your capacity. Recognition work is allowed to be partial. Nothing in this month requires action beyond noticing and recording what repeats. Your Pattern Map can hold a few entries and still be functional.


SCOPE

Scope and safety for this month

This month focuses on recognition and capture. You name what repeats in your body, see how care settings respond to your episodes, and bring both into a Pattern Map. The cognitive work is observational. You are identifying patterns, not acting on them yet.

Scope: A framework for naming lived experience, seeing how different care settings process the same episode, and recording both in a Pattern Map you can reuse across encounters.

Safety: This content is educational and non-clinical. If you have new or worsening stroke-like symptoms, treat it as urgent and follow your local emergency guidance.

If this material activates fear, urgency, or self-doubt, pause. You do not need to push through for the work to become useful later.


MAP

The month at a glance

PRIORITY OUTCOME

Pattern Map (draft)

A written record of what reliably repeats in your body and how different care settings tend to respond. Held in one place, in your language, reusable across encounters.

KEY SKILL

Separating body patterns from system patterns

You learn to separate what your body does during episodes from what the system does in response. This stops inconsistent care responses from merging with your experience of the episode itself.

STRUCTURAL INSIGHT

System priorities explain system behavior

Emergency, primary care, and neurology settings each optimize for different things. Seeing these priorities makes inconsistent responses predictable rather than personal.

BOUNDARY

Where responsibility separates

A clear line between what the system is responsible for and what you are responsible for, so structural gaps in care do not become your burden to manage.


PARTS

Month sequence

These Parts are designed to be taken in order. Each one builds on material from the previous Part.


Part 1

Name what repeats

Name recurring features of your episodes (how they begin, what changes, how recovery unfolds) and capture them as seed phrases for your Pattern Map.

Part 2

How the system sees it

See how the same episode is processed differently by emergency, primary care, and neurology settings, and establish the responsibility boundary between system behavior and your burden.

Part 3

Assemble your Pattern Map

Consolidate seed captures and system-lens work from Parts 1 and 2 into a single artifact: your Pattern Map, the first piece of the Navigator Framework.

If capacity is low, read Part 1 and complete the seed captures. Then skim Part 2 for the system-lens switcher. Save Part 3 for a steadier day.


TOOLS

Tools that support this month

Month 1 builds your Pattern Map. These tools support the recognition and capture work across Parts 1 and 2.

This month's tools support recognition and capture. They do not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment guidance.

OPTIONAL TOOL

Experience Pattern Mapper

Map recurring patterns in how your experience is understood, minimized, or redirected. Use alongside the seed captures in Part 1.

OPTIONAL TOOL

Care Signal Scanner

Classify what happened as signal or noise. Helps you decide which care interactions rise to signal worth documenting, given each setting's priorities. Use alongside the system-lens work in Part 2.


FINISH

What you have after Month 1

By the end of Month 1, you have:

The Pattern Map does not need to be complete. It feeds the Signals section of your Navigator Framework and grows as recognition sharpens across later months.


SYNTHESIS

Key understandings to carry forward

  1. What repeats can be named and held: Recurring episode features and system responses can be captured in a Pattern Map that prevents reconstruction from scratch each time.
  2. System priorities explain system behavior: Each care setting optimizes for different things, which makes inconsistent responses across settings predictable rather than personal.
  3. Responsibility has a boundary: Understanding how systems work does not create a responsibility to manage them. What the system owns and what you own are separate.

If this month brought up fear, urgency, or self-doubt, that is a common response to recognition work. Pause when needed.

Continue to Part 1
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