I found some aviation legal & medical textbooks/manuals that laid out a lot of what I sought to better understand (although in more general terms than I would’ve liked in places) - the material may be out of date, but the same concepts almost certainly apply. You’re right that there is nothing resembling an SI process/procedure and every applicant’s SI process/procedure is potentially entirely different, even for the same diagnosis due to different individuals involved (different AME’s, different CAMI/OKC evaluators, different FAS/DC evaluators). Picking the right AME is huge and being fortunate on the individuals at CAMI/OKC (and, possibly, FAS/DC) that handle my case - which is entirely out of my control as far as I know - is even bigger. The absence of a framework (process/procedure) to facilitate objective & consistent review is offset by the fact that denial is never truly final & some combination of time, additional observation & data, and different individuals (AME, CAMI/OKC and FAS/DC) evaluating a specific case can eventually lead to issuance instead of denial. The fact that denial is never truly final is a big piece that I didn’t understand properly, although - in the The Real World - it seems there could be considerable resistance to convincing the FAA to switch from denial to issuance (“Jimmy looked at this a year ago and denied it so I’d better do the same”). This places a lot of importance on the first attempt, but it’s not the be-all/end-all that I thought it was.