FERS Medical Retirement: Learning for a Lifetime

Life is tough.  There is no shortcut — at least, not for the most part.  Yes, yes, every now and again, a person wins the lottery, or there is a story about someone inadvertently wandering into a maze of success without a clue in the world — but even those people, well, does a clueless person ever attain a level of consciousness which encompasses a knowledge of the clue?

Learning is a lifetime endeavor.  Yes, life is hard, and the need to learn never ceases.  Whether for enhancement of a chosen career or for personal growth, “ever learning” should be a mantra embraced and instilled from birth.  As evolution is part of the genetic make-up of every species, so for humans, learning for a lifetime is a necessity which should be maintained as a daily routine in one’s life.

Always have a book within reach; whether a novel — for, novels reveal the culture’s current narrative of its relevance within a society; a historical account — perhaps of other civilizations, or a specific epoch which triggers your interest; a book of poetry — although, in this day and age, who has the time to read poetry?  A sad commentary, but let’s remember that the Irish still have that cadence of language; or even a sub-genre, like a spy novel or a “thriller”.

Suggestions?

There are too many to name, and to name a few would do injustice to so many others.  Let it suffice: Learning for a Lifetime is what gives life a lifetime of relevance, and reading is the basis for such learning.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who suffer from an injury or disease where that injury or disease prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the basic elements of one’s Federal job, the focus of learning for a lifetime is probably directed towards learning about the medical condition itself, and further, the process of what it takes to legally win your Federal Disability Retirement case.

Contact a FERS Retirement Lawyer who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law, and learn the lesson that learning for a lifetime sometimes requires contacting a professional who has focused upon a specialized area of law — of Federal Disability Retirement Law.

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.

 

OPM Disability Retirement Application: Denials for the Unrepresented

Why are denial letters issued to those Federal Disability Retirement applicants different in nature from those with legal representation?  Why should there be a difference in quality and content?  Why, indeed?

It is an “indication”, of course, of a lack of objectivity in how the U.S. Office of Personnel Management approaches cases.  For, the denial letter issued to an unrepresented individual is often characterized by language which makes it appear as if the person filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits “never had a chance”.  You were a fool to have even tried.  Your application has no merit and should be summarily dismissed!

On the other hand, a denial letter to an individual who is represented by an attorney often will point out some of the legitimate deficiencies; questions about lack of performance deficits; and a greater amount of logical argumentation.

In the end, one might argue — does it matter?  For, both still constitute an OPM Disability Retirement denial.  The answer: Yes.

Not every FERS Disability Retirement application prepared by a lawyer will pass through at the First Stage with an approval.  However, most should at least come close to satisfying the threshold, and those which do not, can always be supplemented at the Reconsideration Level, or with an appeal to the MSPB.

Contact a FERS Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and make sure that your legal presentation to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is given the best shot possible.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement Help: Seeing Ourselves

We look in the mirror, but fail to see ourselves — for, much of the reflective image is taken for granted and the thoughts which pervade keep us lost within the internal spheres of our mental lives.  We drive for miles and, arriving at our destination point, wonder how we got there, not remembering the turns we took, the traffic lights we obeyed and the mechanical signals we switched on and off.

Out family members — parents, wife, children, etc. — look at and through us, but never do they view the totality of who we are, leaving aside our inability to see ourselves as we are.  Then, perhaps, if we are lucky, there is a realization of the reality of the real “I” — jolted by a mirror image, or perhaps someone who actually sees the “real” you.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition can no longer be hidden behind the facade of a pretending “you”, it is time to consult with an OPM Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and to consider revealing the reality of your situation by admitting first that you can no longer continue in the same way you have.

“Seeing ourselves” is often a difficult task, but a necessary one when the conflict between our medical condition and our careers can no longer be accommodated.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire 
OPM Disability Retirement Attorney

    

OPM Disability Retirement: Being Prepared

Boy Scouts are (but no more, apparently, as the bankruptcy of the organization is now pending); interns have to be; wanna-bees try to be; thieves and con-artists always are.

Being prepared is something that we strive throughout our lives; for that momentous opportunity; for the interview that may lead to greater things; for the emergency that we hope will never come about; against the test that reveals our inner character.  We prepare to go out to dinner for the evening; we prepare for the day’s work; we even try and prepare for questions yet unasked and queries never anticipated.

Being prepared is a lifetime’s worth of activities, often surrounded and prompted by fear and worry for a future yet unknown.  Then, despite all of our efforts, there are those events for which we are wholly unprepared, like a medical condition that begins to gnaw and debilitate, that slowly, incrementally and insidiously becomes a chronic state of being.

For the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition such that the medical condition impacts your ability and capacity to continue working in your Federal or Postal job, being prepared is no longer a matter of the medical condition itself — you can never prepare for that.  Rather, it is to prepare for the next step: Of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS.

Consult with an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and take the next and necessary steps in order to prepare for your future.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: This Side of the Graveyard

It begins from the moment of birth and ends only when consciousness recedes into a darkness of a void.   The graveyard is in view the moment life begins, and reminds us of our destination point.

In modernity, of course, more of us scatter the ashes of our beloved after cremation, as opposed to keeping the remnants within a private shrine in our homes.  There is a sense of comfort of connecting to the dead.  Graveyards are not merely plots of earth where tombstones and daffodils abide in the dark of night; rarely visited these days, they remind us of the tenuous nature of our own mortality, and it is this side of the graveyard that reminds us that life is indeed short, and what we do with the limited time we have been given, matters much.

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, always remember that life is not meant to be lived in constant pain and suffering, and this side of the graveyard is a reminder to us that tomorrow is never a guarantee of today’s blessings.

Consult with an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law, lest living with a deteriorating medical condition brings you nearer to the other side of the graveyard, as opposed to remaining on this side of it for a few more years.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement Legal Representation: Simplicity

There is certainly something to be said about it.  But, then, by adding to the very word itself, there is always a danger of complicating the very concept implied from the singular word that stands alone as a paradigm of striving, a goal to attain, an end to achieve.

“Simplicity” is a state of being, a characteristic of existence and the pinnacle of wishes in dreams fantasized.  Yet, nowhere in the historical archives of any fairytales of yore, in whatever form and differences of versions presented — you know, the one that involves a genie who allows for 3 wishes to be granted to the lucky one — do you find the individual request: Simplicity.

No, instead, it is the complex which is always wished for: More wealth; the key to the universe; eternal youth; to be the “greatest X”; or any other of a number of states of being or accumulation of stuff that will only further complicate one’s life.  Never, ever, does one wish for: Simplicity.  Yes, that is what everyone all over the world always claims to be striving for, while at the same time doing everything in order to undermine it.  Does one think that acquiring greater wealth, being granted eternal immortality or an extended childhood of innocence will result in the attainment of simplicity?

And of the world that promises anything but delivers short on everything, the empty palms begin to echo hollow: This new technological gadget X will be a greater time-saver and will “simplify” your life; and that shortcut invention Y will allow you to “spend more time doing the things you want to do”…  If we could bottle up all of the minutes promised to have been saved for every gadget offered, we should all be living the life of simplicity in a stress-free universe.

What becomes apparent is that simplicity is a malleable concept that cannot so easily be defined, and is bundled up with a conundrum of complexities depending upon one’s perspective and viewpoint.  For example, for the Federal or Postal employee who suffers from a medical condition and who needs to file a Federal Disability Retirement application — is the process of presenting proof to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management a matter of administrative simplicity such that completing SF 3112A, Applicant’s Statement of Disability, can be accomplished without proper legal guidance?

The form itself looks simple enough; the questions posed, an artwork of simplicity; and the space in the boxes provide, a simple couple of inches of allowances; so how can such simplicity present a complexity of legal entanglements?

Until, of course, one realizes that simplicity is often the trap for the unweary: look upon that pinnacle of simplicity wrapped in the morning sunlight where the dew forms upon a spider’s web — ah, such simplicity in nature, awaiting the unweary to be trapped and irreversibly enmeshed.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Postal & Federal Medical Retirement: Imperfect lives

Is it a characteristic trait that must even be pointed out?  How, to begin with, did we even come to possess the antonym of that concept?  Of course, that is partly the residual argument made by medieval theologians as to further evidence of the existence of God – that in order to have come to possess the concept of “perfection”, there must by logical necessity exist a being of the sort such that we can even comprehend such an idea.

Thus may the converse of that argument be made:  that in recognizing our own imperfect lives, we must have recognized perfection as a contrast to our own state of existence; ergo, a perfect Being must exist.

Of course, there are fallacies to be pointed out in such argumentation (to which the ancients would immediately posit that there are perfect logical explanations, otherwise we would be unable to recognize the imperfect fallacies contained therein – and ad infinitum, ad nauseum), but in the end, what comes out is that there is no questioning a basic fact:  We all live imperfect lives.  That, in and of itself, is not the interesting part of the equation, however.

What is astounding is that, despite the recognition that we all live imperfect lives, extrapolated from the realization that it is impossible to live a perfect life, we nevertheless attempt to portray to others, and the world over, that it is simply not the case that we live an imperfect life, but that we come as close to perfection as possible, and it is only every other schmuck that lives an imperfect life, even though we all know that the other schmuck knows that we, too, live imperfect lives.

What evidence is there of that assertion?  Look at how people act on Facebook, Instagram, any and all magazines that contained the air-brushed images of pictorial perfection – we all fear to reveal the ugly underbelly of reality, and attempt instead to show how near-to-perfection we live.  Or, the secondary argument goes, if we don’t live perfect lives, we come as close to humanly possible.

And if that one doesn’t quite convince, then the use of a rhetorical device:  Well, what choice do we have, in the end?  That’s the point; in the end, the living of an imperfect life is greater evidence that such a characteristic is not necessarily any fault attributable; it is just the natural state of a decomposing body, a deteriorating mind, of organic matter that is exposed to the influences of the world around.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who realize that a medical condition is preventing the Federal employee or Postal worker from performing all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the recognition that we all live imperfect lives is an important one.  For, what often prevents the Federal or Postal employee from initiating the necessary steps to secure a Federal Disability Retirement benefit is the fear that others may “think” that to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, first through your own Human Resource Department, then on to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, may reveal the underlying imperfection of your life.

Don’t worry about it; if you haven’t figured it out, the “others” who may think that you are imperfect for doing what needs to be done, are imperfect as well.  Really?

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: The legacy

It is something that we leave behind.  Yet, unlike a wallet, a watch, a piece of jewelry or a troublesome child better left forgotten, we don’t have an opportunity to go back and get it.  We say of that laundry list, “Oh, I need to go back and get it” (except maybe of the last in the list, whom we hope will be adopted into a kindly family and simultaneously also leave the parents behind); but not of the legacy.

No one ever says of that, “Oh, I left my legacy behind, and I need to go back and get it.”  Instead, it is intimately bound up with mortality, our sense of the future minus our own presence, and a dominant desire and urge to “leave a legacy” behind, as if to do otherwise will diminish the memory of one who has now departed, will soon be forgotten and will populate the mass of unknown graves without tombstones littering the earth beneath ivy and weeds that overwhelm.

It is often money itself, which is soon spent and forgotten; or a special “something” that one remembers another by, which is placed in a drawer and also quickly, easily and without conscience soon forgotten; or, perhaps a more lasting imprint of some residual effect – a poem, an antique car (otherwise referred to as a “junk heap”), or the family farm.

Whatever the legacy left leaving lasting latitudes of lost loneliness lacking love’s longing for lengthy locutions (sorry for the alliteration, but it cannot be helped), it is something that is left behind, cannot ever be retrieved, and may or may not have a lasting impact upon the person or groups of people for whom it is intended.

Then, one can stretch the meaning to include a more modern interpretation of the concept of a legacy – of one’s own.  That is a paradigm of a “legacy” in the more common usage – of a memory of one’s life, of what kind of a legacy will one leave that will be remembers by others – that you worked yourself to death and didn’t spend the time with your kids (refer to the above, first sentence herein, where that may be a blessing), your wife or friends?  What is the point of an empty legacy of that sort?

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who begins to think of one’s life, health, future and legacy, especially because a medical condition has begun to impact one’s ability and capacity to continue in the Federal or Postal career of one’s choice, the consideration of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often and intimately tied and bound to the fragile nature of a medical condition and its impact upon one’s life.

Struggling daily with a medical condition while trying to contend with a contentious Federal Agency or Postal Facility is not only “not fun” – it is, moreover, a futile exercise that diminishes the legacy of one’s life as a greater whole.

The “legacy” one leaves behind, indeed, is not like a wallet, a watch, or a piece of jewelry; but it is like a child left behind, where regrets for the future may yet be corrected, and for the Federal or Postal employee who needs to focus upon one’s health and future orientation that can no longer include the current job one occupies, preparation of an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to OPM, may be the next best thing to a legacy yet to be considered.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: The Indeterminate Deterioration

Some events come with it a specific date, and even a time; others, within a span of identified moments and blocks of weeks, sometimes months; the rest, undetermined, unspecified, like the lost soul who wanders the traversing echoes of eternal reverberations left to the sifting cleansing of a foaming ocean washing and lapping, ever repeating the comforting sounds of surf and salt strolling like the footprints gone in the sands of countless castles disappeared.  But that medical conditions would conform to the science which attempts to treat, and approach one with technical precision and certitude.

When did you first notice the symptoms, the kindly doctor asks, as you scratch your head and stutter forth an incomprehensible gibberish of a response.  A similar question is posed on SF 3112A, concerning the “date” (approximate) the Federal or Postal employee became disabled from one’s position.  How does one answer such a question?  Fortunately, it asks not for a day or time, but merely the month and year, and to that extent we can be thankful for its inherent foresight.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who attempt to answer this question without much thought or reflection, be forewarned and with a hint of suspicion; trap doors abound everywhere, and while one may overstate issues like the paranoid cousin who points a telescope not at the moon and stars, but directly at the next-door neighbor’s bedroom window, it is well to consider carefully the answer to be given.

The context of intermingling meanings:  Was it during one’s tenure as a Federal or Postal employee (for those separated but contemplating filing within 1 year of being separated from Federal Service)?  Will it prompt the question, Does the medical condition last for a minimum of 12 months, including the time encapsulating the prognosis of the doctor?  Does it coincide with any event or issue arising at work?  Does the date identified precede any adverse action promulgated by the agency or the U.S. Postal Service?  Truth is always the guide for integrity in all cases, but the reality of a medical condition is that time is often discovered on a spectrum, where chronicity and deterioration spans over many months, and often years.

To pinpoint is to be precise; but where deterioration is progressive and indeterminate, the fading sounds of an unspecified echo which bounces from cave walls to the expansive skies beyond the realm of certainty, the date recognized may be one which floats and fades like the dust of angels left as a residue of virtue.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

How to Handle an OPM Disability Retirement Claim: Tempered Approaches

Life is often a linear experience of extremes; this is an age when expectations call for responses of excess, and not of minimization.

There is no sense of an “eye for an eye” — a proportional sense of fair play, or of deescalation of conflict; rather, as we become callous and conditioned to shock therapy of the cultural sort, so there is little to amaze or to surprise, and by the first grade, the child of modernity has experienced it all, from profane language to stories of war, murder and mayhem in the streets.

Once upon a time, innocence was protected and valued for preservation of character; today, the fairy tale of yore is a politically incorrect compendium of hateful speech, replaced by extremes of thought where thinking itself is a danger to one’s self. Collaterally, so the responses one observes must also tip the balance of tempered terminals of tolerance.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must enter into the world of bureaucratic morass, when a medical condition begins to impact one’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, it is important to maintain a tempered balance of rational thought.

Medical conditions themselves induce an atmosphere of extremes; fear of progressive deterioration, of an uncertain future, and sudden reaction by supervisors, coworkers and the agency as a whole for whom one works.

In such an environment of toxicity, it is important to maintain a reasoned, rational approach in preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, and to recognize that it is first and foremost a “paper presentation” submitted to another agency altogether separate and apart from the agency of one’s own hostile work environment — the U.S. Office of Personnel Management — and as such, should not carry over unnecessarily the unrelated and unconnected toxicity of one’s own Federal agency.

In the end, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM must of necessity contain an inherent sense of urgency because of the very nature of the endeavor; but throughout, a tempered approach of calm confidence should pervade, even if the world around us seemingly falls apart in a morass and deluge of deliberate deterioration.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire