FERS Medical Retirement: Response to the Shotgun Denial

When the U.S. Office of Personnel Management issues its Initial Denial of a Federal/Postal Disability Retirement application, the usual methodology of argumentation they employ is likened to a shotgun blast — with very little aim or focus.

It is a frustrating narrative to read, and all the more so because they have had an unlimited amount of time to formulate and write the denial, whereas the denied applicant is provided a very short response time.  The Denial Letter can appear extensive in scope, and the initial reaction is to try and rebut each and every line of the denial letter — which is the wrong approach to take.

The “right” and most effective responsive approach to take when responding to an OPM Denial of the Initial application is to categorize the various issues into a manageable number of subcategories, and then to respond to each in a systematic manner, and as to each, to cite a supportive case law that favors your argument.

Remember always that OPM’s purpose in denying your case is two-fold — either in hopes that you will not respond in a timely manner or not at all (thereby obviating the need to do anything further because you will have lost your administrative right to proceed any further in the process); or, that the process will appear so complex that you will fail to respond adequately to the multiple points of the denial letter.

Do not get caught up in the “fairness” issues — for, the entire bureaucratic process is unfairly weighted in favor of OPM at every turn, and to become embroiled in arguing against the unfairness will only lead to endless frustration and get you nowhere.

Instead, contact an OPM Disability Attorney who is familiar with FERS Disability Retirement Law, and begin to prepare and formulate an effective response to OPM’s Shotgun Denial of your Federal Disability Application under FERS.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
FERS 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 Disability Retirement: Soundness of Sleep

Whether and to what degree we attain it depends upon so many factors.  Some contend that it has to do with a clear “conscience”, but one doubts that, as there are plenty of horrible people whose consciences should be bothered, yet who enjoy the soundness of sleep.  As “sin” is now considered by many an outmoded and antiquated concept, few are bothered enough to have an interruption in such soundness.

But then, goes the argument — Why are so many people unable to have soundness of sleep?

Diagnosed “sleep disorders” appear to be on the rise — of Obstructive Sleep Apnea; of interrupted sleep cycles such that the affected individual in unable to attain the restorative slumber necessary for the next day’s activities.  All sorts of medical “cures” are being offered: From sleep medications to CPAP machines and equipment; advice on what to do and not to do in the hour before sleep; and many other medical applications, all in order to assist in achieving that pinnacle of slumber’s bliss: The Soundness of Sleep.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition — of Obstructive Sleep Apnea; Profound Fatigue; Excessive Daytime Somnolence, etc. — the impact upon one’s inability to perform the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job can be a primary basis in qualifying for Federal Employee Disability Retirement benefits.

Contact a FERS disability expert who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, filed under the current retirement system for Federal employees, FERS, which is processed through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and see whether or not the lack of Soundness of Sleep may be a basis for your future Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

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.

 

Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Disability Retirement: The Idiot

Of course, it is the title to one of Dostoevsky’s lesser known works — or one which few have read.  The author, of course, is the great Russian novelist — who wrote long and arduous depictions of psychological compendiums that only a person of great patience can read.

It is assigned in some high schools; perhaps, still in some colleges; then, after exiting the world of academia, it is quickly forgotten.  It is like many books: claimed to have been read by many, but which are actually only glanced by a very few.

There are other books similar to it: Not in plot or character, but in the fact that few read them — Tolstoy’s works; Arno Schmidt’s, Bottom’s Dream; and others.  But of The Idiot — its central character is a man who is simple and good, but it is in his simplicity and goodness by which people question his intellectual intactness.

And there is a point to that, isn’t there?  We have become so tainted with cynicism that we equate moral virtue with cautionary ineptitude.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job — be wary of approaching your agency, your postal manager, your Human Resource Office, or even the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, with an attitude of simplicity and goodness.  For, if you do, you may end up like the character in Dostoevsky’s work, The Idiot.

Instead, contact a Federal Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law to help you maneuver through the bureaucratic morass of a Federal Disability Retirement application, lest you end up being characterized by that term in the truly pejorative sense of the word.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: Loss of Continuum

How does a child know where the neatly-packaged meat displayed on a store’s shelf come from?  Or the clothes which hang on a mannequin displayed behind a plate of glass; or even of the glass itself?  And what about the old man who shuffles by with a cane and a bent back?

The child walks by and the old man staggers, and what question does the little girl ask or does the old man disappear after the two pass by — poof!  Like magic.  Yet, the old man — and the little girl — each have a life beyond the mere passing; of a childhood one has and the childhood the other will yet have; of a home, a hearth, a heart full of memories harkening from here to there, or perhaps to nowhere.

In a village of yesteryear, the continuum of each life is known because everyone shares in the life of each other as a community of interconnected lives.  In modernity, we give lip-service to “caring” and the continuum of life, but the reality is that we have no relationship with the person who stitched our clothes; nor do we know which animal from whence the meat came; or the farmer who grew the tomato in the produce section, let alone the life and problems of the person who stacked the Nestle cookies on the shelf so neatly.

The loss of continuum is how we live, and that is true of the Federal or Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition and goes into work — more often than not, none of the coworkers know the circumstances of the individual except that he or she is a “shirker” because he or she fails to “carry his own weight”, anymore.

Filing for Federal OPM Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is often a step towards regaining the continuum previously lost — at least for the individual whose career in the Federal Service is no longer appreciated in a community which has been dispersed with the loss of empathy and loss of continuum.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement under FERS: The Promise

Can you make a promise to yourself?  What would that look like?  Would it be valid and binding?  If not, how would we “prove” it?  Perhaps in a similar manner as Karl Popper’s “falsification” approach — of being able to come up with conditions under which a theory or a posited application can be “falsified”?

Take the following hypothetical: A man sits in a cafe and is clearly upset; perhaps he makes unconscious heaving sounds, and tears stream down his face.  A friend of his happens to visit the cafe, enters, sees his friend in distress and sits down at the same table, uninvited.  “What’s the matter?” the friend asks out of concern.  Hesitant but clearly wanting to share his feelings, the individual queried answers, “I broke a promise, and I feel really terrible about it.”  Pausing — for, despite being his friend, this particular person has a reputation for exaggeration and overstatement — he forges onward bravely and asks him to “share” his story, believing that empathy is the better part of valor.  “Well, I made a promise that… [and the reader can fill in the blank following the ellipses].  And I broke it.”  The friend, concerned and puzzled, asks: “And who did you make the promise to?”  The distraught Person A looks up, tears still streaming down his face and states calmly, “To myself, of course.”

Can such emotional turmoil remain commensurate with the fact of a broken promise made to one’s self?  Can a unilateral promise be binding, or can it be broken with as much ease as the creation of it in the first place?

We all make promises to ourselves, and perhaps an argument can be made that the very essence of “character” and “integrity” is revealed in how scrupulously one abides by those promises made and kept by and to one’s self — even if others don’t know about it.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must contemplate filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS, through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the promises made, thought of, kept or broken may make a long list in a cruel world of treachery and misstatements.  Perhaps you made a promise to yourself that you would make the Federal Service into your lifelong career; or, perhaps it has to do with not wanting to “give up”.  Whatever the promise, life intervenes and we all have to adapt to the changes of tumultuous circumstances.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS is never a broken promise, no matter the soliloquy spoken or thought left unspoken; rather, like the friend who comes into the cafe to give some comfort, it is a reminder that there are choices and options in life that may be a better fit than to remain miserable with a job that is no longer consistent with your medical conditions.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Retirement for Mental or Physical Incapacity: Of Dreams Before

It is the past that always haunts; of dreams before, when youthful vigor and innocence begetting of naïveté left one breathless with a clueless notion of the world.  Was it better to live in a world of fantasy, where the world was limitless in its potential — or do we prefer the reality of cynicism where we finally comprehend the restrictions of imposed constraints?

The worst form of put-down is to refer to a middle-aged man or woman as one who “had” so much potential; for it is the third person singular in past tense that evolved from the present tense of “has”, and we wonder when the variation substituting the “s” with the “d” occurred.

It is all well and good to be young with yet the fading scars of an acne-riddled chin, with barely a stubble to makes a difference by a razor’s edge in the morning, and be referred to as a person who “has” potential; it is quite another when the first wrinkles of botox-resistant flabbiness find a permanent home in the comfort of an expansive forehead, when the verb is still applied but with the substituted subtlety of the interchanged consonant, barely noticed but with conviction declared.

That is when, of dreams before and hopes once harbored become but shadows left behind in the greenery of a forgotten childhood.

Do we despair when we no longer have dreams?  Are we sadder, less positive, more cynical, when the potential others noted have been dashed with the ravages of time, reality, cold facts and ruthless societal indifference?

One can possess virtue in this world, so long as it is never tested; but is virtue of any value if it never encounters reality but remains in the ivory towers of conceptual constructs?  Of dreams before — before what?  Before the “real world” extinguished them and relegated such to the trash heaps of childish fantasies, never to be redeemed because of the debts owed and the responsibilities to bear?

Yet, one can hold on to some dreams, and even if never realized, the dreams of youth may still be enjoyed regardless of the substitution of the “s” for the “d”.  What others say of you may not always be applicable; it may just be a soliloquy of regrets reflecting the speaker’s own failures.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition and need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the fact that things didn’t “turn out like they were supposed to” does not mean that, of the dreams before, everything has to be abandoned.

OPM Disability Retirement is merely a means to an end; it is, for the time being a means in order to focus upon one’s health and well being, in order to prepare for a future beyond today’s sorrows.  Federal Disability Retirement benefits allows for a person to gain some semblance of financial security in order to get back to good health, and to allow for the past tense to return one to the third person singular in the present tense — for dreams today, and not of dreams before.

Sincerely,

Robert R. MdGill, Esquire

 

Early Retirement for Disabled Federal Workers: The chaos of life

The Biblical reality depicted in the very first verses reflects a reality more real than most would suppose, and for those who dismiss the ancient Books as merely relics of a superstitious past and thus irrelevant for modernity’s wake of technological sophistication, perhaps a redux and revisitation is in order.

Most of life is chaos; or, to put it more starkly, the chaotic lives we lead are the rule, and not the exception.  How else to account for the constant need for quietude, of a short respite by leaning back into one’s chair and inviting the soft darkness of a needed nap; a renouncing and resignation away from the constant din of noisiness; of the rush to find time, just a sliver of sanity, within the vast chaos of a feckless universe.

The soft-lined trees that lead us back into our neighborhoods; of the structured redundancy where sidewalks circle into ever-repetitions leading to nowhere; of bedrooms lined like secluded rooms within insane asylums just to get a moment’s peace from the busy-ness of life; and then the alarm clock awakens, the rush is on, into traffic mazes that pound the heart, create migraines from a calm just experienced a mere hour before, and the addiction to craziness begins anew as the dawn of hope becomes mired in the hopelessness of today’s grinding schedule.

The earth is no longer without form, or void, and yet the chaos of formlessness and void-ness remains and surrounds; and the light that we declare is the recreation we so desperately seek, only to be interrupted by the survival instincts that remind us that what we live for cannot possibly be attained, but somehow the darkness from which we escaped so long ago is a vestige of hopes yet rekindling, and if we can only make it through this day, perhaps tomorrow will bring to us a sacrifice of our better selves.

The chaos of life is real; it is with us each and every day.

And 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 reality of such chaos begins to dawn upon the need to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, lest the chaos of life become life’s chaotic life everlasting, never to be rescued from the formless void of ancients long since remaining.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Postal & Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The festering mistake

There are mistakes; then, there is the compounding one where we fail to identify X for what it is, and continue to make excuses by deflecting with Y, excusing with Z or replacing it with XX.  This is called the “festering mistake” – that mistake which, like a wound that could easily have been attended to, is allowed to become infected, then spread, then become so serious as to require further and drastic means to save a life.

Think about it: it may have begun with a minor cut; it is dismissed and ignored; and from there it can develop into a spreading infection, sepsis, incurable and incalculable damage.  That is what often results from ignoring a mistake; failing to recognize the mistake and attending to it; refusing to identify the mistake and attend to the symptoms; avoiding the direct confrontation and culpability of it with unintended consequences of greater reverberations beyond that which was originally the core of it.

We all make mistakes; it is the festering mistake that leaves us devastated – not only for the mistake itself and the growing complexity of trying to make up for lost time in failing to attend to the mistake itself, but further, for the failure of identification.  Just as the seat of wisdom is the recognition of one’s own ignorance, so the engine of success is the identification of mistakes early on.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are attempting to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the key to a successful outcome – no matter how long the process, and regardless of the difficulties to be faced – is to recognize the mistakes potentially there to be made, identify the pitfalls to be avoided, and realize that you cannot put “blinders” on OPM once they have seen that which was neither necessary nor any of their business to review or entertain, and to never allow a festering mistake to occur in the first place.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement: The Value of Consistency

Consistency establishes validity; validation results in enhancement of credibility; and credibility prevails over minor errors and unintended oversights.  In analyzing a narrative, or engaging in a comparative analysis of two or more documents, it is the factual and historical consistency which allows for a conclusion of validated credibility. When a pattern of inconsistencies arise, suspicions of intentional misdirection beyond mere minor error, begins to tinge.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS, or even CSRS Offset, the question of sequential order of documentary preparation is important.  Such relevance on this matter can be gleaned if the preparation is looked at retrospectively — not from the beginning of the process, but rather, from the perspective of OPM and how they review and determine cases.

With that perspective in mind, it is important to prepare and formulate one’s Federal Disability Retirement application based upon the appreciated value of consistency, and as consistency of statements, purpose, coordination of documentary support and delineated narrative of one’s disability and its impact upon one’s inability to perform the essential elements of one’s positional duties is recognized, an effective Federal Disability Retirement application will be formulated with deliberative efficacy, and where retrospection through introspection will result in increasing the prospective chances of success.

Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Purgatory Reverie

The state of the intermediate, the surreal loss of traction in suspended animation; of trying to jog on ice, or to reach a destination traveling on a treadmill; this is a sense one is left with in dealing with a juggernaut of a bureaucratic morass.

In this day of immediacy, where the instant satisfaction of wants and the now of gratifications is met and reinforced by the push of a key, the click of a mouse, and touch of a sensor; and as virtue is no longer looked upon as a necessary ingredient of character, but rather an irritating obstacle to a material goal, so patience cannot be wanting where fissures have widened to such an extent that chasms have created chaos.  Planning ahead is always the key to the timely confluence of achieving the stated goal.  And then some. And perhaps even to multiply the waiting time by a factor of 2.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal and Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, it is precisely that inherent self-contradiction of the constancy of being forever suspended, which gives rise to frustration and turmoil.

Much of it is in anticipation of what the Agency, or the U.S. Postal Service, will or will not do.  Will they initiate an adverse action during the process?  Will they approve the discretionary LWOP request?  Will they “support” the Federal Disability Retirement application, or attempt to undermine the procedural march towards OPM’s approval?

Waiting upon an agency is never a good idea; neither in deciding to move forward on a Federal Disability Retirement application, nor in trying to make an educated guess as to what the agency’s reaction would be (or, in dealing with one’s agency, is it an oxymoron to concurrently use the terms “educated” and “guess”?).  Agencies move at their own pace, and do what they want, when they want, as fiefdoms and totalitarian republics are decidedly meant to provoke.

It is never a good idea to make one’s decision concerning preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether one is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, by waiting upon an agency’s actions; for, the immediacy of ignorance may never come about, or suddenly be initiated yesterday; and as purgatory is in and of itself a reverie of angels suspended in timeless harpsichords of orchestrated serenity, so the ill Federal or injured Postal employee who thinks that it is a good idea to wait upon the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service before initiating a Federal Disability Retirement application, will of course remain lost in the long and winding road leading to the pearly gates of tomorrow.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire