FERS Medical Disability Retirement Law: Doctor’s Orders

Does strict compliance with doctor’s orders guarantee recovery and good health?

Quite obviously — not.  Medicine is not a science, although it is “science-based”.  The history of medicine — including psychiatry — does not have a pretty history.  It possesses a lineage of trial and error; of successes and failures; of applications which now appear barbaric; but of great and impactful discoveries, as well, including antibiotics and medicines which have saved lives.

Doctor’s orders, in the end, constitute the bare minimum; the rest is often up the individual as to what further to do: Of reducing stress; of eating healthily; of changing or discarding bad habits; of exercising and changing the lifestyle habits which harm.

And what about filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS?

If you are a Federal or Postal employee who has at least 18 months of Federal Service, you may be eligible — but you must also follow the doctor’s orders.  That is one of the “unspoken” requirements of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management — to be compliant with the medical regimens ordered, to see whether or not you have tried everything in order to get better.

For, OPM’s argument is that if the doctor’s orders are not followed, it can never be known whether or not it was the medical condition which prevented the Federal employee or Postal Service employee from performing his or her job, or the lack of compliance which intervened.

Contact a FERS Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and consider whether you have followed the “doctor’s orders” before you begin the process of following the “Lawyer’s orders”.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
Lawyer exclusively representing Federal and Postal employees to secure their Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement Benefits: Memories

When we have a memory of ourselves as a child, do they depict an image apart and independent?  How is it possible to have an accurate memory of yourself playing in the woods, being at school, swimming in the pool — as a separate being independent of your mind’s eye?

It is the extrapolated “you” — the one who somehow, over the years, became projected into an image we believe we remember, despite the impossibility of its accuracy.

We can step out of ourselves, view ourselves from above or afar, and “remember” how we once were, what we once did, who we once met, etc.  We hold an image of ourselves, both today and yesterday, and it is the memories we hold firm until the reality of the present challenges the image of the past we remember.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition which becomes challenging to one’s career, holding on to an image of health, vitality and strength is often the last vestige to remain before the reality of necessity sets in.

When that moment comes, and the memories of a past “you” collides with the present reality, it is time to contact an OPM Disability Lawyer who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law, and to preserve the good memories while protecting your future by obtaining a Federal Disability Retirement annuity.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Early Retirement for Disabled Federal Workers: The approximation

How do we learn to approximate?  Or, more approximately, how do we learn when it is appropriate (or inappropriate) to approximate?

When and how did we learn that there is a distinction with a difference between an engineer constructing a tall building and a chef adding a few more spices than what the recipe calls for — that consequences derived from the difference between approximation and precision make a world of difference?  Or even the amateur chef in mistaking a sprinkle of salt for a cupful, or of a judge in the Olympics who shrugs his or her shoulders and says, “close enough”, when the difference between a fraction of a second or an approximation thereof means the awarding of a gold, silver or bronze medal?

How close is the enemy?  Approximately a mile or so away, give or take a few hundred yards…could mean the difference between victory or defeat.

How old is the earth?  Multi-billions of years, give or take a few, or count the genealogy of religious texts and multiply them accordingly.  Any consequences for believing one paradigm over another, and aren’t both merely approximations, anyway?  How precise can a science be when the claim is made that X is 500 billions years old?  Could it not be 499 or 498 billion years old, instead?  In terms of percentages of being “off”, it is minor; but in gross numbers, a billion here or a billion there could mean quite a difference; just look at the investors of Facebook who recently lost a good portion of their portfolio.

Approximations are fine, but they need to be tempered by conditions and circumstances, and for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition where the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, to “approximate” where precision is required may not be the best approach in putting together one’s Federal Disability Retirement application.

Of course, “the law” is never a precise endeavor, and cannot come close to requiring an engineer’s reliance upon mathematical calculations nor even of an architect’s blueprint for constructing an archway.

However, precision of legal argumentation; proper wording of medical narratives; careful positing of legal citations — these are all approximations which, in their aggregate, accord a greater precision in preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in enhancing the greater chance of an approval for each stage of the process, as it is precisely the greater approximation of precision that allows for lessening the imprecision of that which comes closest to the approximation of a science in a non-scientific discipline.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

 

Federal Disability Retirement Representation: The problem perspective

Does “positive thinking” actually work?  Or, is it one of those pithy approaches to life, where the “throwaway” line is used to dismiss unpleasantries and negative influences that might otherwise disprove the obvious — that life is difficult enough without listening to the difficulties of others?  Then, there is the “problem perspective” — of seeing everything as a problem as opposed to a solution or opportunity, and to see the world as a glass half-empty in contradistinction to a half-full universe.

Objectively, of course, both descriptions reflect the same objective reality; the contention is that “how” we view the world (i.e., our subjective perspective upon the world around us) influences the manner in which we approach the objective world in deliberating, solving, resolving, tackling problems, embracing situations, etc.

The “problem perspective” describes a person who sees everything from the vantage point of a problem.  It is all well and good, of course, to speak about having a “positive” frame of mind when things are going well; it is when actual, objective problems and difficulties arise in one’s life, that the “real test” of whether “positive thinking” works comes into question.

Objectively, of course, one could argue that, whether one possesses a “positive” mindset, a “negative” perspective, or a somewhat neutral approach, the outside world (that “noumenal” universe that Kant referred to) cares not a twit about what we “think” (i.e., the phenomenal universe that Kant distinguished — the one that we actually have access to) about it — for, it still exists whether we have a positive, negative or neutral perspective, anyway.

It is when the objective world impinges upon the subjective perspective with an undeniable negation of the positive — as in, a medical condition that debilitates and makes for a painful existence, whether physically or cognitively — that the test of whether a “positive” outlook works, or whether a “negative” perspective makes a difference, tests our daily lives.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the approach one takes may indeed make a difference with a real distinction.  Yes, the end of one’s Federal or Postal career may be coming; and, yet, the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service may well move to terminate you based upon your growing inability to perform one or more of the essential elements of your Federal or Postal job.

In the end, such a “problem perspective” is a very real one, and becomes a problem precisely because there is a combination of both the “objective” world (the medical condition itself) and the “subjective” one (what to do about it; the next steps to be taken; the decision to be made, etc.).

Preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, may not only be the best “next step” to take — it may be the “only” one in the sense that all other options are undesirable: to stay and suffer; to resign and walk away without doing anything; or to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

In the end, all “problem perspectives” need a positive solution, and preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application is the best and positive solution for a Federal or Postal employee needing to resolve the problem perspective where one’s medical condition no longer allows for the fulfillment of all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Leisure, nature’s antonym

Observe the animals excluding the human one; what do they all do, except perhaps the male lion who awaits the predatory prowess of the lioness and her cubs who hunt for the royal crown; and the rest, of constant pecking, searching, laboring just to survive.  Nature’s law requires survival; survival mandates predatory consumption; the rest look out that they are not in the sequence of a food chain that includes one’s self.  For, it is the resting bird, the supine squirrel and the slumbering rabbit that becomes the meal of Nature’s law.

Leisure, by contrast, is a relatively modern concept.  In the yesteryears when wagons traveled upon roads uncharted, and weekends were comprised of a Sunday afternoon beyond the morning prayers and sitting upon the hard bench of a preacher’s sermon about sin and hellfire, even then the food to be prepared for the evening meal, the water to be gathered from the river beyond the horizon, and the animals that required tending lest fences left rotting allowed for the nighttime burglars of foxes and coyotes to wander uninvited for an unsolicited meal; no, leisure is nature’s antonym, unknown and relatively unheard of except in these days of modernity, where the right to full weekends and paid vacations and “down-time” and sustained interludes of systematic quietude are a necessity within this world of constant razzle-dazzle in noisy streets of uninterrupted brackets of thunderous blaring where we cannot even think without being bombarded with informational overload.

Leisure requires time; time necessitates periods of calm away from the constancy of survival’s instinct, where the appetitive division of the soul is taking a break from the search for satisfaction, thus allowing for a reflective repose, an interlude of contemplation and a self-recognition that, yes, I am actually enjoying myself in doing this mindless activity or fun engagement.  Leisure is, in the end, nature’s antonym, in the very resistance to being able to relax, to reflect and to remain relatively rested in retrospective renditions of relentless reaping in the reality of raucous and riotous living (sorry about the alliteration, but it cannot be helped for fear of further farcical fancies fettered forever from feckless and foreign flattery).

In modernity, it has somehow become turned upside down, where leisure was once unheard of, dangerous to the very instinct of survival, and rarely engaged except in the slumber of midnight exhaustion.  Now, it is declared to be its very opposite – of a necessary means to survive, and without which work and ‘making a living’ cannot be accomplished because time away allows for the restorative powers to reenergize those proverbial batteries gone dead.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who need to contemplate filing a Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, there is little time to contemplate leisure as Nature’s antonym.  Chronic medical conditions tend to be a type of ‘work’ in and of itself – exhausting because of the constant attention it requires, and profoundly fatiguing upon one’s body, mind and soul.

That being said, obtaining a Federal Disability Retirement is necessary for precisely that reason – as a means of focusing upon one’s health, in order to attain a level of normalcy such that tomorrow can be another day to battle. In that sense, preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application is an exception to the rule – for, it is not leisure as Nature’s antonym, but more likened to the days of yesteryear when the one time the body required leisure was to rest in order to regain one’s health, just to have another tomorrow to battle the greater world of predatory juggernauts.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement from Federal Government Employment: Imprisoned souls

Do we immediately know of the figurative sense of such a concept?  As the Medieval times of dark, dank and dire dungeons no longer house the tortured detritus of human excrement cast aside upon the nod of displeasure noted by a King, a Prince or a scorned Court of Royal Courtier, so the immediate presumption is that such a term must encompass some cognitive obstacle or encircling of a mind otherwise in agony.  And what of the second term in the concept – does it denote something separate and apart from the whole of a human figure – that essence of a person that tells us that there is something beyond an amalgamation of neurotransmitters and physical presence such that the entity is distinguishable from an amoeba, a flower or those closest of cousins, the chimpanzee?

When a person is looked upon with empathetic concern, is it the image of the individual that gives rise to the sensitivity, or the soul that is embattled within the confines of the exoskeleton that defines the profile like the shadow of an image one sees of a person standing against the lamplight in the dark of night?

When a scream is emitted from the depths of a human uttering, of the physical intonation and shrill cries reverberating through the caverns of a mouth widened in anguished turmoil, do we reach out to provide comfort merely to the physical shape and form of a human being because we can relate to an entity so closely recognizable as that which is reflected in the mirror of our daily lives, or is there that “something” which theologians continue to haunt us with, that transcends the superficial appearance of sense impressions that is discussed from ages foregone, from Plato’s Forms that constitute the “real” reality beyond the appearance of things, and the clinically antiseptic explanations of Hume’s Empiricism that provides a foundation of separation and divide that laid the groundwork for the future of Existentialism a century or more hence?

We are, all, in a general sense, imprisoned souls anguishing in the turmoil of daily angst, but for the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who must also contend with a medical condition, such that the medical condition is about to cut short a promising career, the future is often viewed from a bleak perspective, and the daily harassment from Supervisors and Managers only exacerbates the troubled lives we must all manipulate and maneuver through.  Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is not an easy process; it may be, however, the only option left and available for the Federal or Postal worker who can no longer perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position.

In that sense, the Federal or Postal worker who is left with the best option available – of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through OPM – is considered an imprisoned soul, for it is not only the medical condition that impacts upon the choices left in life’s trials and challenges, but the constraints and curtailments one self-imposes by agonizing over one’s future as he or she steps forward in trying to maneuver through a complex administrative process.

How to free one’s self?  By simply acting; by moving forward, even if the future is somewhat unknown and uncertain; for, in the end, it is movement itself that distinguishes the difference between life, imprisoned souls, and deadened entities that merely survive.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire