Postal & Federal Disability Retirement: Adrenal Fatigue

One need not be officially diagnosed with Addison’s Disease in order to incur the wrath and ravages of adrenal insufficiency.

Life’s multiplicity of compounding and complex stresses; exhaustion beyond merely feeling “run down” or otherwise out of synchronized balance from everyday feelings of adequacy; a sense of profound fatigue, where cognitive dysfunctions develop, and where symptoms of falling asleep at meetings, where the world appears at times to become a distant echo chamber and what others view as a normal pace appear in dizzying fashion of incomprehensible clatter of distractions; and where visual disturbances occur systematically as one attempts to view the computer screen and perform work which, in previous times, was merely mundane and monotonous, but now requires an effort beyond sheer force of will.

Does modernity and technological stress contribute to medical conditions which may have no name, and often defies pigeonholing because of the mysteries of the human body and psyche?  A broken arm is easy to identify, and normally just as correctable; a cervical or lumbar disc degeneration, perhaps a bit more complex, but often manageable; chronic pain, but for a parallelism between objective testing and pain points, sometimes an anomaly; psychiatric conditions, of greater mystery which has become too often a pharmacological corridor for treatment modalities; but where profound and intractable fatigue more often than not is beyond the capacity to be diagnosed.

However one characterizes it — of adrenal fatigue, insufficiency, chronic fatigue syndrome, or other designations of type; it is ultimately the reality of the daily toil and turmoil with which the patient must contend.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who experience such a state of physical and psychiatric condition, filing 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, may be the best and only alternative available.

In the end, adrenal fatigue may be more than an endocrine imbalance; there is often a complex component where multiple medical conditions ravage the body and mind, and as with so many issues in law and life, there is a vast chasm between having a medical condition, being properly treated for the condition, and proving one’s medical condition in law such that one can be found eligible for Federal & Postal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Fatigue, whether of the adrenal kind or of resulting impact from a lifetime of stresses, is a basis for Federal OPM Disability Retirement; attending to the condition should always be the first order of business; proving it, the second and subsequent thereafter.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Affirmative Steps

Procrastination is the bane of progress; by delaying and kicking the proverbial can down the road, the chances of decreasing one’s odds of accomplishment become magnified exponentially.  What is the reasoning behind inaction and inertia?

Human life must by necessity involve movement and progress; for, unlike other species who find the immediacy of satisfaction and gratification to be the basis of existential justification, we bring to the fore the coalescence of one’s memory of where we came from; a future hope of where we want to go; and in combing the two, a greater purpose of teleological rationality within the context of the here and now.  But that which provides the foundation of uniqueness, can conversely be the lynchpin of destruction.

Self-justifying language games of self-immolation; we can construct strings of logically valid reasonings based upon convoluted cacophonies of orchestrated mutterings.  But that which appears reasonable is not always valid; and as validity constitutes the systemic structure of logic, so that which may reveal itself as sound uttering may merely be a whining whisper of a mad man’s meanderings.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who can no longer perform all of the essential elements of one’s position, the reasons for not filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits are wide, varied, and often complex.  “This job has been my life for so long” (understandable, but change is often an inevitable feature of life); “Maybe my agency can accommodate me” (unlikely); “I am hoping to get better” (yes, but in the meantime, what is your agency planning to do?).

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is a big and dramatic step.  But for the Federal and Postal worker who cannot perform at least one, if not more than one, of the essential elements of one’s positionally-determined duties, it is time to consider taking some affirmative steps in a direction which one often knows to be true, but where procrastination is the path of least resistance.

And, yes, to err is human, but at what cost, and where does human history reveal that delay results in a successful outcome?

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire