Medical Retirement for Federal Workers: Macro & Microcosms

Reading the newspapers can be a tricky affair; for, while the importance of being “informed” must arguably override the need and desire to remain untroubled, one cannot but engage a short perusal before concluding that cataclysmic events daily dominate. Perhaps sensationalism and the competitive drive to sell a story requires the printing of negative news; or, maybe there is a journalistic force of integrity demanding that crimes, wars, ruination of reputation, and calamities both natural and man-made be the center of our attention.

The macrocosmic events which have little to no direct connection to our lives, are allowed in by our need to be informed; and, as gatekeepers of what enters our insular world of quietude, such disturbing allowances prevail upon us at our discretion. Medical conditions, of course, are of a different generic stripe.

Within the microcosm of our peaceful and mundane lives, the intrusion of a medical disability, whether of an acute and sudden nature, or of the more insidious, chronic and progressively debilitating nature, is akin to a stealthy burglar who invades without invitation, who creates havoc without discretion, and who leaves behind a trail of overturned chaos with little understanding or sympathy.  The microcosmic universe of one’s personal mind, body, soul and emotional balance, can turn into a turmoil of abysmal ravages no less than a war-torn nation some thousands of miles away, and having no direct connection to one’s town, neighborhood or household, but with just as devastating consequences.

For the Federal and Postal employee, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS or CSRS, is merely a trifle of a step in an attempt to stabilize the chaos one experiences when the microcosmic world of one’s creation becomes likened to the macrocosmic state of disastrous events.

Federal Disability Retirement is a “positive” step within a disintegrating universe impacted on a large scale by a deteriorating medical condition which prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing all of the essential elements of one’s job.  It is a goal sought in order to reach a state where one can attend to chasing out the proverbial burglar, or at least to straighten out the mess left behind.

In the end, try as we might, perhaps we can never truly escape the deep abyss of the human condition; and ultimately, perhaps it is best to cancel one’s subscription, and instead become lost in a novel about elves and hobbits. Ah, but we forget…there are those unseemly orcs, too.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal and Postal Disability Retirement: Mourning for Things We Never Knew

We often reminisce for things we never knew, but imagined we once had or hoped to have; of small towns and neighborhoods where caring concern characterized a sense of community and belonging; or perhaps it was from our remembrances, formed and solidified from old television shows we grew up with, when once innocence of times of yore remained with us to form dreams of a brighter future.

Health and monotony tends to have a similar effect. The former, because we take it for granted; and the latter, because we mistakenly believe that crisis equals excitement, when in fact security of daily living without eruptions of emergency management is the quietude which most of us seek, though we fail to appreciate it.

For the Federal and Postal employee who suffers from a medical condition, the times of yore when a life without pain is barely remembered, and where the lingering effects of an extensive medication regimen was once comprised of a single multivitamin pill, the thought of wanting to return to a “time prior to” is often at the forefront of daily reminiscences, and constitutes the limited hope for the future.

At some point, however, as medical conditions continue to deteriorate, and as the surgical interventions, palliative medical procedures and list of countermanding medication regimens increase in volume and expand in extent, it becomes clear that the impact upon one’s attempt to maintain an appearance of normalcy can no longer be tolerated.

When the Federal or Postal employee’s medical condition impacts one’s ability to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, it is time to consider preparing the steps to formulating a Federal Disability Retirement application.  Such a Federal Disability Retirement application must be ultimately filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and because the waiting process can be quite lengthy, the initial steps should be contemplated fairly early in the recognition of medical condition-to-impact upon one’s job.

Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit there for Federal employees under either FERS or CSRS, and is a compensatory system enacted precisely for those Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition which impacts one’s ability to perform one’s job.

Longing for a time once remembered is an activity of comforting reminiscence; the reality of the present, however, awakens us from the slumber of such daydreams of an era once blinking on the horizon of a time long passed.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Disability Retirement for Federal Workers: Unwanted Change

Stability is what we seek; yet, with stability comes habituation and a staid routine of repetitive boredom.  Adventure, excitement and stimulation; these come at a price, and so we revert and remain in the cocoon of safety, daydreaming of that potential, other-worldly experience, but only if it can be attained under certain circumstances within our control.

That is the anomaly; change is often desired, but only with certain prescribed and proscribed stipulations within our control.  Unfettered change is to enter into the unknown, and therefore unwanted.

That is why medical conditions which impact one’s daily life is unwanted; not only did we not ask for it, and not only is it a burdensome change which forces one to rethink the course of one’s future; it is an experience into the abyss of the unknown.  It is an unwanted change precisely because it suddenly, and often irreversibly, mandates an alteration of course.

For the Federal and Postal Worker who suffers from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, serious consideration should be given to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.  Whether under FERS or CSRS, Federal Disability Retirement is an employment benefit offered to all Federal and Postal employees.

In the midst of turmoil and change, it allows for a return to the landscape of stability by providing for a base annuity, and a change to engage a second, alternative vocation.  Medical conditions are unwanted changes, and the control which one seeks within the turmoil of life is often found by attaining a further change beyond that unwanted one.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Disability Retirement: This Side, or the Other, of Paradise

It represents that mythical existence — whether in a physical sense, or a metaphysical state of being — where harmony, the absence of pain and a continuum of pleasure and contentment are experienced daily and in sustained fashion.  Perhaps it is a fictional creation propelled by those who have known the negative of that which has been formulated.

Ultimately, it is the place to which we strive, and whether we arrive just on the other side of paradise, or on this side, is the criteria which society judges as to the success or failure of a given life.  And who is the judge, and what right to render such a judgment?  One’s own assessment, and the insular world of one’s psyche, may well be enough for most; but that often merely involves the sleight of words, of redefining what words mean, in order to fit the conceptual construct which others have proposed.

For the Federal and Postal Worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that he or she must contemplate filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under FERS or CSRS, the capacity to attain a level of restorative quietude through relief from daily activities, may well be enough to constitute a state of paradise.

It is amazing how the threshold of meanings and goals to achieve are lowered considerably when one experiences pain or psychological turmoil and hurt.  Only those who have never experienced a medical condition fail to know what it means to be caught in the proverbial web of medical necessity.

For the Postal Worker and the Federal employee whose lives are shaken by a medical condition, whether it is physical pain or cognitive dysfunction, or both, the difference between landing on this side of paradise, or on the other side, is often determined by whether one gets Federal Disability Retirement benefits or not, and whether the period of rest and restorative state of being is attainable by securing one’s future stability and sense of peace.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement for Federal and USPS Workers: Expectations

Puppies are special creatures.  They give their loyalty and love unconditionally, and only ask to explore the world we present within the constraints we define.  They are expected to grow old with us; and when they die young, it is a tragedy beyond comprehension.  To cease before one’s time is difficult to bear, precisely because one’s expectation is that the next generation will carry forth where the previous one left off; and so we view the world in this logical, sequential manner of linear progression.

The puppy grows; he may not live as long in terms of human dimensional existence, but we expect our companion to accompany our linear presence.

Careers are formed that way.  We expect incremental progression; for the Federal and Postal Worker, step increases and annual recognition through monetary incentives for the valuable work which is performed.  But life has a way of interrupting our expectations; and just as the life of a puppy may suddenly and without reason end through an accident or illness, so a career may be cut short because of reasons beyond one’s control.  When life’s harshness intersects with human expectations, a change of one’s linear thought processes must occur.

Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit which is available for all Federal and Postal employees who have met the minimum eligibility rules of 18 months of Federal Service (for FERS) and 5 years (for CSRS employees).  It is that benefit which must be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, for those whose expectations have been cut short because of a medical condition which prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job.

As the precious life of a puppy may unexpectedly encounter the harshness of the world in which we live, so the Federal or Postal employee may face the same hardships; however much we may try to cushion and protect, both for the Federal and Postal employee, as well as for that special creature.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Early Medical Retirement for Disabled Federal Workers: Joy of the Mundane, Though We Knew It Not

The very concepts of “joy” and “mundane”, placed within the same breath, the same sentence, creates what is tantamount to an anomaly, a self-contradiction, an oxymoron, or at the very least a questionable positing of an invalid proposition.

For we tend to consider joy in terms of momentary elation, an extended period of satisfaction, or a sense of quietude wrapped in layers of giggling quivers.  Conversely, the mundane evokes boredom, monotony, a time devoid of elevated emotional responses; a time of negation, where the chasm between desire and duty floats apart from one another like drifting icebergs in the cold North Atlantic seas.

Until a medical condition intervenes.  Until the chronicity of a progressively deteriorating and debilitating disease or injury eats away at our body, mind and/or soul.

In a crisis, the monotony of the mundane becomes preferable; and in a protracted life of chronic ailments, that momentary period of quietude when life was merely the ordinary and the boredom of everyday existence prevailed upon a life questioned as to value, purpose, character and the eternal “why?”; it is then that one comes to realize the ultimate Zen character of enlightenment, and recognizes the living distinction between joy and the mundane.

For the Federal and Postal worker who suffers daily, Federal Disability Retirement is a viable alternative to the daily divide which has grown disproportionately magnified, between joy and the mundane.

Federal Disability Retirement benefits are part of one’s bundle of employment benefits.  It is a benefit filed through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, for those under either FERS or CSRS, and allows for early medical retirement, while tending to one’s health conditions.

We all once knew the joy of the mundane; but such knowledge quickly gets erased when a medical condition creates a crisis.  Federal Disability Retirement allows the Federal and Postal employee to relive that joy — of the mundane, the monotonous, of the everyday existence of the ordinary which we all seek and desire.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Employee Medical Retirement: Habit Encountering Critical Mass

Most people live lives of peaceful habituation; and while Henry David Thoreau would add that they live “lives of quiet desperation,” such a state of desperation erupts only when the habit of daily living, whether quiet or not, is interrupted by an event or a series of events.

Those who retain their health, or have never encountered a period of chronic medical conditions, can never fully comprehend the tumult and trials of such impact — upon one’s professional life, certainly, but moreover, upon the private life of quiet habit, of merely attempting to sit in a chair; to read; to engage in a leisure activity.  But “leisure” can be enjoyed only if the substantive life of habitual endurance can be lived in a relatively peaceful manner.

For those who have come to a point of contemplating preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, that former life of peace and quietude — of that “boring” daily habit of thoughtless living — must now be confronted with the reality of a medical situation which must be aggressively pursued, in order to secure one’s future, and to retain some semblance of peace back into one’s life.

Those Federal or Postal employees who must fight for Federal Disability Retirement benefits — ah, but if only they could have remained in their peaceful lives of daily habituation.  But the encounter with the reality of a medical condition awakens them from such peace and repetitive living; there comes a point when a different course must be affirmatively taken, with obstacles dropped in the path — from a hostile work environment, to coworkers and family members who show no empathy — but the fight must be fought, so that one day the disrupted life of quietude may once again be attained in some semblance of sanity.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Disability Retirement: Returning to the Boredom of Health

Everyone desires to attain a path of certainties, where life has a rhythm of regularity, predictability and consistency.  We often complain of a life of boredom, but there is a distinction to be made between “being bored” and having what some would consider a “boring existence”.

One need only encounter a life-threatening emergency, or a crisis impacting self, family members or friends — or a serious medical condition.  Then, one yearns for those “boring” days of yore, when living a daily existence of merely being pain-free, when one could bend, reach, turn, twist, pick up a cup of coffee — without a thought of invasive and excruciating pain; of a time when focusing upon a task did not require one’s utmost energy and stamina; where the intrusion of nightmares, anxiety and panic attacks did not paralyze one’s totality of being.  Living a boring life for those encountering the “excitement” of a medical condition, as opposed to “being bored”, found a consistency of a rhythm of certainty.

In preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, it is the goal of the Federal or Postal employee to enter into a period of a recuperative universe, in order to get back to the days of a boring existence.  Boredom is not necessarily a negative thing; indeed, when one is beset with a medical condition which prevents one from performing the essential elements of one’s job, the very notion that one’s prior existence of health was somehow less than exciting, is a puzzle to those who have lost their health.

Federal Disability Retirement is a chance to attain the boring life of yore; preparing properly the application for submission; formulating it effectively; and filing it to attain the goal of returning to that former self, is a consideration worth making.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire