Medical Retirement from the U.S. Postal Service and other Federal Agencies: The State of Solitude

Having a medical condition necessarily results in a state of solitude.  While others can empathize, no one else can fully comprehend the totality of the experiential turmoil and trauma, the emotional, physical and psychological toll upon the diminished personhood and the daily struggle endured.  It is a solitary state of existence, and all the more so when individuals, agencies, friends, family and acquaintances fail to take the time to understand.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must, on top of the medical condition itself and the residual impact and consequential symptomatologies which pervade and cling, like dust mites slowly feeding upon the progressive trail of human deterioration, continue to contend with the exacerbating and exasperating reaction of one’s own agency, supervisors, managers and coworkers who engage in daily pettifoggery of irritating acts of hostility and unpleasantness, the dual contention of dealing with the medical condition while concurrently responding to adverse actions by the agency or the Postal Service, only serves to exponentially increase the tension and turmoil.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset is not (and should not be) an issue of surrendering to the slings and arrows of the agency or the U.S. Postal Service; rather, it is a recognition and acknowledgement as to the greater priorities of one’s life:  to continue with an agency or organization that clearly no longer wants or needs you, and thereby complicate properly and adequately attending to the medical condition itself; or to affirmatively choose to forego the unnecessary stresses of an increasingly hostile work environment, and to take the required steps to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, eligibility for medical retirement through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

There again, such a decision must be made within the contextual state of solitude; for, in the end, it is only the person experiencing the trauma of the medical condition who understands the need to lessen the solicitous state of existence, in order to escape the solitude of a soul’s anguish.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management: Crisis Points of Urgency

Additional responsibilities unexpectedly piled on tend to magnify it; life’s inevitable bumps often reveal it; mere negative news may even confirm it; and medical conditions certainly quantify it.  The “it” referenced by each subject signifies the crisis point and juncture of necessity; and the underlying substratum which forms the common element throughout, is the medical condition which impacts upon a person’s life.

Thus, for most healthy individuals, the daily stresses of life, the unexpected flat tire, the transmission blown which costs beyond what was budgeted for; a foolhardy act by one’s child, resulting in a legal process; even a project gone badly at work, where blame is ascribed to an unfair and unjustifiable degree — all can be tolerated by the manifold capacity of the human spectrum of dealing with life’s turmoils; but add the ingredient of a medical condition, where the physical and psychological stamina of will and stability are tested and stretched beyond one’s limits, and suddenly a crisis develops.

Further, holidays tend to exponentially exacerbate and take things out of proper balance and perspective. For Postal and Federal employees who are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the sudden need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, especially during a time of added stresses and untold and private points of crisis, is often real and the compelling circumstances of immediate urgency. But it is always the long-term view which must be maintained, despite the desire to give in to a sense of existential doom of an immediate collapse, where time, space and cognitive dimensions suddenly stampede into that flashpoint of unsettled coalescence.

OPM Disability Retirement for the Federal or Postal worker should always be planned, and seen as the way towards a brighter future. For, while the present circumstances of one’s life may seem like the collapse of a lifetime, it is the sense of future boding, of a plateau of quietude as one approaches a lonely path in the dawn of one’s life, which should be taken in order to secure that hope for tomorrow.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire