FERS Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: Point Guard

He is the captain of the team; the one who sets the course, the pace and the rhythm of the group, whether on offense or defense.  Whether for a “set” play or an ad hoc fast break requiring creativity and quick thinking, the point guard directs, plans, initiates and commands.

If he hogs the ball and fails to dish out to the open play maker, he falls short in his role and endangers the emotional character of the team by allowing for resentment and loss of confidence. If he becomes reluctant in taking the open shot himself, or takes it and doesn’t score, he allows for the potential loss of confidence in himself.

The point guard, in short, is the most important position to fill in the most competitive of group sports: basketball.

Similarly, in an Federal Disability Retirement case, who directs, commands and coordinates the amassing of the necessary documents?  Who is in charge of directing the legal arguments to be made?  Who will initiate the process of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through the defensive giant of the opposing team — the U.S. Office of Personnel Management?

Contact an attorney — your point guard — in preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Federal & Postal Employee Disability Retirement: The Stress of a Medical Condition

It may well be that the stress of modern life is the cause and origin of many medical conditions — although one may never be able to “prove” a direct causal link between the two.  Yet, we all know intuitively that the way in which we live is unhealthy and contributes, exacerbates and — if not “causes” — certainly impacts upon our health in negative ways.

Then, of course, when a person is beset with a medical condition, the stress of the medical condition itself further debilitates us: The stress of not being able to work; the stress that is placed on our finances; the stress that is placed by further worries and heightened anxieties.

It is the classic “vicious circle” and the catch-22: We need the time to allow the body and mind to heal, but cannot afford such time, and so we aggravate the medical condition and allow the stress of a medical condition to make things worse — into a never-ceasing struggle of stress and debilitating existence.

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 the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, contact an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and consider stepping outside of the vicious cycle of allowing for the stress of a medical condition to create a circular anomaly of self-destructive inevitability.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Federal Disability Retirement Benefits: Descending Into

Whether into the arena of the devil’s playground or into insanity, the metaphor always seems to include a descent, and not its opposite, an ascent.  Why heaven is above and hell is below has been lost for its context and underlying meaning; the perspective of “up” as opposed to “down” must somehow be relevant, but science has certainly diminished the metaphorical significance by debunking any notions about time and place.

We now know that the sun does not “rise” and “set” in the rotational movement of the earth; that from the perspective of deep space, there is no “up” or “down”, and that our place within the universe is but a small, insignificant pinhole within the context of a greater universe.  But the human story, regardless of the cold perspective provided by science of an “objective” world, is that we descend into madness, descend into hell, and descend into chaos.

Language is a peculiar animal in this way; it uses its ordinary sense within a culturally relevant context, but when that context disappears or is no longer “alive”, the old manners of usage become an anomaly of puzzles.  Yet, even with its loss of cultural significance, “descending into” somehow maintains its appropriateness when it comes to mishaps, tragedies and difficulties.

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 position, descending into greater chaos and difficulties may be mitigated by preparing and filing an application for disability retirement.

Consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin the process of ascending towards another life beyond the Federal or Postal sector, thus preventing descending into a state of turmoil and possible termination.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement for Federal Gov. Employees: Something Less

This is a country that has preached abundance for multiple decades, a couple of centuries, and certainly for a lengthy run on the concept: Expect more, not something less.  It has been touted as the flagship of opportunity, a place where dreams come true and hope abounds.  There has never been a view towards something less, for something less is an unacceptable concept to endure.

Commercials and television ads tout that we can “have it all”; that with a pill, things will be better; that if you buy a certain product, magic occurs; and if you whiten your teeth, everyone will like you better.  But what if life occurs where something less must be accepted?

Federal Disability Retirement pays 60% of the average of one’s highest 3 consecutive years of service for the first year, then 40% every year thereafter.  It is something less than what a Federal or Postal employee makes, but certainly something more than “nothing”.  It then actually does allow you to make something more — for, on top of the 60% the first year and 40% every year thereafter, you are allowed to go out into the private sector and make up to 80% of what your former Federal or Postal position currently pays.

Of course, your medical condition has already made you realize that life has to be adapted to with something less — something less than your full health; but Federal Disability Retirement does allow for something more, as well: Of a career beyond the Federal government.

Consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and obtain the counsel and guidance of something more in dealing with a medical condition which has already resulted in something less — in terms of health and your ability to perform all of the essential elements of your Federal or Postal job.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

OPM Retirement for Mental or Physical Incapacity: Of mice and things

In the early morning hours or in the late twilight of night when everyone else is fast asleep, of mice and things scurrying about tells of a world beyond the days where we awaken and watch.  We all have a tendency to anthropomorphize upon a world we otherwise would fail to understand, and projecting our own characteristics upon another species has always been what we cannot resist.

Of mice — do they run about when everyone else is away because of fear, or because they, too, love the quietude of a period when all except the insomniacs and burglars tiptoe in shadows of darkness where the innocent dare not trample upon?

Sometimes, in the rush from hiding place to food source, the mouse will pause, lift up on its hind legs, look about, nibble a bit, then off again; and when they become bold enough to actually stare and look directly at the master of the house, you know that it is time to bring out the cheese and the traps, for they have exceeded their welcome and are likely becoming too comfortable in a home that they are unwelcome.

And what of the “things”?  Well, there are mice, and then of course, centipedes and spiders, and cousins of mice, and other things.  They are the ones who go “bump” in the night.  Are we like them?  If a greater master were to look upon us like we do of mice and things, would that Grand Wizard think similar thoughts?  That if we scurry about in fear and try and remain anonymous and unobtrusive, we would be left alone; but if we became bold in our unwelcomed status, a trap would be set for us and we would be cast aside into the oblivion outside of the walls of our own making?

Isn’t that how the injured Federal or Postal worker feels when a medical condition continues to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing all of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal worker’s position?  Such a Federal or Postal worker begins to feel like the mouse that scurries about trying to survive, but once he or she gets noticed, the Federal Agency or the Postal Service begins to set traps, to put the pressure on and proceed to ostracize and get rid of the pesky things.

Fortunately, Federal and Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition have somewhat more protections than those accorded to creatures small and large, of mice and things.

Preparing 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, is one such “protection” that allows the Federal or Postal employee to move beyond the workplace harassment and attempts to remove and terminate, thereby ending a career where one has invested one’s life to prolong.

What the Federal or Postal employee does not want to do, is to end up like those creatures that go bump-in-the-night — of mice and things — by failing for access all available benefits, and especially a Federal Disability Retirement annuity that can secure one’s future and allow for one to focus upon the important things in life, like one’s health.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Retirement for Medical Incapacity: Tranquility times turmoil equals?

Alliterations often require deliberate disentanglement; for, the focus is often upon the consonant being repeated, as opposed to the coherence of the alliterated sequence of words.  Both can be attained, however – of coherence and of repetition without incomprehensible aggregation, and in this instance, the multiplying effect of the calm of one’s life by events beyond one’s control can easily result in turmoil that was never requested, never desired and remained always unasked and unrequested.

Tranquility x turmoil is the idea that we fail to enjoy the relative calm in our lives because of the anxiousness of knowing that all good things cannot last for long, and must come to an inevitable end, no matter how hard we try to remain the solitary stoic in life, regardless of the hermitage we seek and irrespective of the complications we shed in order to attain a Zen-monk-like livelihood.

That is when, for instance, a medical condition hits us and the complexities of the life we attempted to avoid come to the fore and become all the more magnified, times 10 in an exponential ferocity that we simply cannot ignore.  True tranquility, however, requires the ability and capacity to keep all things in perspective, and to resist the temptation to allow for the turmoil to overwhelm us.  Keeping in mind that the concept itself can never be reduced to a mere mathematical equation, the question then becomes: What is the multiplicand, the multiplier, and finally, the product?

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 the Federal or Postal worker’s job, it is when the monotony of daily living (tranquility) becomes interrupted by the medical condition itself (turmoil), that the product of decision-making is forced upon one’s life.

There are multiple options, and none of them are very satisfying: The Federal or Postal employee may just endure and continue on “as if”; the Federal or Postal employee may get terminated or sanctioned because of excessive usage of leave, whether of Sick Leave, Annual Leave or LWOP, or a combination of all three; the Federal or Postal employee may ultimately believe that resignation from Federal employment is the only option left; or, the Federal or Postal employee may recognize that preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted and considered by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is the most viable conclusion to a mathematical equation that one never expected to have to calculate.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: The picture album

Time was, every family had a picture album – that anachronism bound carefully in a large leather book-shaped monstrosity, kept safe where dust settles and mice scurry around; taken out for occasions where boredom is accentuated and friends or neighbors have stayed long past their welcome, and so it is taken out carefully, dusted off and laboriously paged through, telling of a history for each page, each photograph laid meticulously upon the thick plaster-backboard of a person’s history.

It used to be that we all had one picture for an event – or, two at most, once Peoples Drug (for those who are old enough to remember; and that, in and of itself, was somewhat of a historical marker – when “Peoples” Drug – the drugstore of the “people”, was bought out by successive entities of greater reserve until it finally became a nondescript, boringly corporate entity under the designation of “CVS”; somehow, something was lost when the corner drugstore started in a suburb of D.C. was engulfed by mergers and corporate purchases) declared a two-for-one sale.

Of course, we all kept in safekeeping those brownish negatives that neatly fit into those thin plastic columns (i.e., thrown into a drawer based upon the sequence of receipt) – you know, the ones you hated to slide out because you could never get it back in without bending them, and somehow you suspected that they were never meant to be fit within the columns of plastic in the first place.

Somehow, there was something quaint and innocent about a picture album that only had one shot of a slice of life that told a limited tale about a person’s continuum of historical detail – by contrast, today’s Smartphone and digital chip that can hold literally thousands of photographs, and the person who is willing to show all in a public display for everyone in the universe to see, by downloading, uploading, displaying and replaying, for a person barely in his or her twenties.

The picture album is an anachronism, telling in its humility, limited access and manifesting a humble origin of consciousness.  It is a relic that bifurcates a “before” and an “after” – of a time now gone and lost forever, replaced by an after that manifests a change most of us never asked for.

To that end, the picture album is likened to a Federal or Postal employee with a medical condition.  That Federal or Postal employee suffers from a history of that which most of his or her coworkers are completely unaware of.  And like the picture album that is taken out from the dusty bookshelves of a corner closet, when the Federal or Postal employee comes to a point of needing 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 reaction displayed by others is often one of boredom, lack of concern or even of interest shown in forced phoniness.  For, what others know or find out about a person’s life – even of his or her medical condition – is ultimately a private slice of life that is shared with quiet discretion.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Youthful mind, decrepit body

The oxymoron of the objective world; yes, it can perhaps be maintained in the virtual reality of cognitive dissonance, but the human body warns and tells all.  The basic problem is that while the “mind” retains an image of frozen time, the body continues upon the progressive course of constancy in deterioration.

We all have an image of ourselves, and no matter how many times a day we look into the mirror, that “image” remains with us, as we are not the one’s watching ourselves as we grow older.  Yet, the body ignores the image we hold, and time, nature and the linear disintegration of organic matter leads to the consequences of a decrepit body.

We are reminded of this when we do silly things – like challenge a high school kid to a game of one-on-one after not having played basketball for a fortnight and a decade; or join in a pick-up game of football or other activity upon a dare, a challenge or an embarrassing invitation in the public’s realm of sight and sound; and though we may try and ignore the body that has advanced by the call of Nature’s echo, the reverberating results scream in the morning’s light as the human body resists the image beheld.

There are, of course, sad exceptions to the “youthful mind” counterpart – of dementia and early onset of cognitive deterioration; but of the decrepit mind, there is no offset, though by cosmetic surgery and other artificial means, we may fool the image reflected in the mirror to somewhat match that which is beheld in our minds.

It is this constant bifurcation and mind-body dissonance that allows for old men to act foolishly and young men to laugh uproariously.  Somehow, the disconnect between the youthful mind and decrepit body has never quite overcome the incommensurate nature of the two; but, then, perhaps that is why Aristotle’s primary focus was upon the rationality of man as the defining essence of his being, knowing that the far greater value resides in the area more populated by angels than by aging bones.

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who is getting ready to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or even CSRS Offset, the greater travail imposed by the mind-body problem may well come to the forefront in preparing one’s Statement of Disability on SF 3112A.

For, rare is the instance where either and both are not impacted, even in the case that the primary medical condition is psychiatric and not physical, and vice versa, if the focal illness is physical and not psychiatric.  For, the mind can be impacted in other ways beyond the formal diagnosis of a psychiatric condition – by loss of mental acuity, profound fatigue that goes beyond mere daily exhaustion; and how the two are intertwined may be important in later years if the U.S. Office of Personnel Management sends out a Medical Questionnaire and you are recovered physically, but not mentally, or again in reverse order, recovered mentally, but not physically.

In the end, the general rule of “normalcy” of having always a youthful mind while one’s body continues to become decrepit, can be defied only to a limited extend; but for the Federal or Postal employee who is seeking Federal Disability Retirement benefits, the interconnectedness of both is important to consider in preparing, formulating and filing an effective OPM Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: Left to our own devices

This is a world where loneliness prevails.  Despite all of the “connectivity” that is bandied about, the fact is that the suffering of human relationships has been on the rise since the industrial revolution, and perhaps even before that.

The proverbial term itself has taken on a double meaning (for those who are comfortable with a more sophisticated linguistic and grammatical ascription, that would be a “double entendre”) – not only in the traditional sense of the phrase as encapsulating the abandonment to make our own way in the world, but in the sense of modern technological overload, of the very pragmatic sense that each of us are surrounded by the electronic contraptions we have embraced in pursuance of connection and social constructs that have resulted in a foreboding sense of growing isolation and angst at the loss of a human touch.

It is that loss of tactile warmth – of holding hands in a movie theater, picking up on the subtleties of facial expressions and looks; of being able to read the soul’s essence through intonations and the mystery of sense impressions.  We are all, in the end, left to our own devices, and more so in this universe of appearances and medium of messaging through words and abbreviations of words where illiteracy parallels the self-delusion of relationships created, maintained and transmitted by light’s illumination.

As Philosophy lost its pinnacle of wonder and incessant questioning when the pragmatic successes of science overshadowed queries perennially posited but never resolved, and as British Empiricism relegated all problems to mere linguistic wastelands where the tinkering of word-orders resolved long-held philosophical conundrums as mere confusion over grammatical misunderstandings and incomprehensible definitional mishaps (as only the British could so arrogantly decide for us how we should speak our language – although, oops!  — the greatest culprit was not English at all but that Vienna-born rabble-rouser, Wittgenstein); so we have now come full circle and find ourselves lost in a paradise of our own seclusion, like the image of the Cave in Plato’s Republic, where we see only shadows, only our own devices, and forever isolated within the illuminated tablets of devices made in foreign parts unknown.

That is the same sense that Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers feel when they are hit with a medical condition that cuts short one’s Federal or Postal career.  Isolation, being left to one’s own devices (in both senses of the phrase – of having no help from one’s own agency and presented with a number of puzzling and confusing forms to fill out), and like the boat up the proverbial river with no paddle, a reduced chance of success with the behemoth of all agencies, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Fortunately, however, there are “repair-shops” and refund policies for devices which don’t quite work; and the first step is to consult with a disability retirement lawyer who specializes in doing FERS & CSRS law.  Left to our own devices, we are bound to come up short with inadequate answers; for, in the end, it is the devices which we use, in the proper and most effective way, that makes the difference in an otherwise mad, mad world.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Postal & Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management: Letting Go

Sometimes, it is the striving itself which has propelled the continuation of action without thought, constancy without interruption, deterioration without remedy, and life without living; and amidst the automatic pilot which has carried forth the daily treadmill of forward progression, one looks back and wonders, Where did the time go?  Where did the concept come from — of unmanned space flights, drones without onboard pilots and driverless cars?

Yet, we need only look at ourselves in the mirror, and realize that the reflection which looks back is merely an image which disappears when the eyes close, the lights are turned off, or we simply walk out from the room.  Who we are; the essence of our very make-up; the surface appearance which belies the core and centrality of the bundle which aggregates to define the whole; is it the effort, or merely the thrill of the trying, which compels the hunt?

Time passes, but we rarely notice; age comes upon us, and like that proverbial thief in the dead of night, the wrinkles form like caverns scraping at the earthen clay, forming ruts and ravages over evolutionary quietudes of moonlit shores.  We strive too hard.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who come to a point of recognition that all of the effort in the world will not save their jobs because of the medical condition which continues to deteriorate and impact one’s ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of the positional duties empowered, the necessity and realization of 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 come at different times, alternate phases, and indiscriminate moments when least expected.

Time can be a friend for medical conditions, but when the treadmill of striving takes us nowhere, the moment may have passed, and long since left us, beyond the period when we should have already filed.  Doctors have already spoken; friends have already warned; and family members have shared their concerns well beyond intrusion of courtesy.  Letting go of one’s past glories is often the hardest part of the process, but let go we must, and begin to prepare, formulate and file for Federal or Postal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire