FERS OPM Disability Retirement: Subtlety’s Disappearance

Was there ever a stabbing seen?  Or, was it the raising of the knife, the shadow of the woman behind the shower curtain, the chalkboard-fingernail-scratching music; and blood; and of the psychotic stare of Anthony Perkins.

Or from that classic Western — not the gore of modernity, but the sudden scream and the terrified, bulging eyes of the older daughter as dusk was setting and the mother didn’t want the lamps to be lit — or later when John Wayne began shooting repeatedly at the buffalo in anger; we saw not the slaughtering of those beautiful creatures, but the facial expression of a rage-filled searcher.

Where is subtlety?  How is it that we came to know fear and terror without seeing the actual gore and blood, but by the facial expressions seeing and experiencing it for us?

In modernity, of course, everything must be made explicit, because when the current audience has already seen the extremes of violence and murders, including “real-time” violence from mass school shootings and other group mayhem, there can be no subtlety left, and subtlety’s disappearance is merely the reality for those who grow up in a surreal reality of virtual un-reality.

For Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition where that medical condition will no longer allow you to continue in your career of choice with the Federal Government under FERS, “The Law” is an aggregation of subtle differences.  Often, it is the citing of a particular case-law which will persuade the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to approve a disability case.  Arguing that law will often make that subtle difference, but the lack of such argumentation will likewise result in subtlety’s disappearance.

Contact a lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and let not subtlety’s disappearance be the basis of failing to get an approval from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, lest subtlety’s disappearance lead you to the blood and gore of modernity’s obsession with explicit violence on the screens of our minds.

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.

 

FERS Disability Retirement Benefits: Of History Unknown

Many of us consider ourselves to be “history buffs” — we are proud that we can accurately recite the beginning dates and end-dates of major wars; of knowing the primary principals of each; of the sequence of Presidents; of who was shot and by whom; of when Fort Sumter was fired upon; of the day that Wall Street crashed, etc.

Dates are important to us; they provide a context for our present circumstances.  Yet, history is also about individual lives — often lost in the anonymity of greater events, and few of us have the imagination to appreciate how previous lives were lived — of not having indoor plumbing; of getting water from a well; of not having a refrigerator; of being so poverty-stricken that death by famine was often a perennial cycle of acceptance.

Other people, and other lives we barely even know or consider.  We barely know our next door neighbor, and yet we pride ourselves in accurately reciting authors from esoteric works of history.  Of the history unknown, they remain a mystery.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have a sense that your contribution to the Federal Agency is somewhat akin to the history unknown — of relevance no longer appreciated and work left unappreciated — it may be time to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.  You medical condition has essentially rendered you a “non-person”.  You are no longer a member of the “mission team”.

Consult with a FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and consider fading away with a Federal Disability annuity by joining the multitude of the History Unknown — or as General MacArthur once said, “Old soldiers never die, they simply fade away.”  And so for the history buffs: Where did he say it and in what year?

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement Legal Representation: Owing and debt

Why must advancement always entail greater complexity?  Or, is that merely the concurrent and natural evolution of linguistic modes of communication?  Do words ascribed and the antiquated, outdated philosophical concept of language as a “correspondence” between the objective world and the language games one plays (yes, an admixture of Bertrand Russell’s criticism and Wittgenstein’s deconstructionism combined) naturally result in the bungled world of complications as a mere afterthought to sophistication and the rise of a civilization?

The simplicity of a stone-age civilization, where pursuance of food and the bare necessities to survive – is that what can be termed a “simple” life, and therefore a primitive, less advanced (or none at all) civilization?  Does the capacity to invent, discover and apply technology by definition establish that a collective group of people has “advanced”, and is the advancement a reflection of greater complexity, or is complexity the hallmark of such advancement?  Can you have an “advanced” society and yet maintain a level of simplicity such that the pinnacle of such advancement is better defined by the simplicity of living standards?

And where does sophistication, culture and refinement of the arts fit in?  Does the fact that exchange of monetary currency, the involvement of extending credit and the concomitant issues of owing and debt necessarily arise in a complex society?  When did the concept of “owing” and the concurrent idea of a “debt” owed come into the daily consciousness of an individual, a society, a civilization?  And, was it first tied to the idea of money, then to an analogy about “favors”, obligations, return of bartered goods – or was the very idea of owing or being obligated to, and having a debt to be repaid, separate and apart from the exchange of currency?  We owe a “debt of gratitude”, and a sense of “owing” that which we borrowed, or the debt we are in, and there is the “debt ceiling” and bills yet to be paid, as well as a “debt of loyalty” – do these all arise from the origin of bartering and money-lending?

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 employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal employee’s capacity and ability to continue in the career of one’s choice, there is often a sense of “owing” the Federal Agency or the Postal service “something” – one’s time, one’s gratitude, one’s commitment, etc.; and that the “debt” has to somehow be repaid by killing one’s self to the enslavement of work.

It is a false idea one clings to.  The “owing” one must first be concerned with is the debt to one’s self, first – of health, future orientation and obligations to a family one has brought into this world.  Don’t confuse concepts; and be aware of metaphors that have evolved from civilization’s greater complexity where advancement does not always mean greater complexity of confounding confusions.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Separation from Federal Government Employment: The uncommon denominator

Why is it that the common denominator is always represented by the basest of related factors?  The answer is simple, of course, and a tautology of sorts; for, that which is uncommon, by definition, constitutes a rare and prized feature, and through sheer economic application of supply and demand, the latter is heightened when the former is scarce.

Thus, in issues of character and human essences, the core of an individual is represented by the base elements of evolutionary Darwinism, and would therefore constitute the most simplistic of instinctive drives; whereas culture, refinement and societal structures are developed beyond the commonality of base factors.

Rousseau could be said to disagree with such a perspective, as his romanticized postulate of man’s vaunted “state of nature” reflected a penultimate, idealized condition of peaceful coexistence; but as no one has yet discovered an actual sociological enclave where such existence of sympathetic amplitude resides, it is doubtful that such defiance of the general view of man’s iniquitous soul provides the greater factor for an uncommon denominator.

For most, then, it is that which we share with all others; and, indeed, the element which interrelates everyone, is that which we publicly declare to abhor, but summarily engage in within the confines of law, societal mores, and acceptable norms of behavior. Except, of course, when the weakest of victims display the wounds of life, and the predators circle and abound like vultures encircling high above in the wind streams of timeless watchfulness, waiting upon a crumbling civilization as the decay of flesh and dying carcasses fume in the heat of the midday sun.

Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers know well the feeling of the common denominator; it is often that factor which brings everyone together in a semblance of denoted behaviors.  And it is precisely the uncommon factor which brings about the circling birds of prey; for, the Federal or Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition is “different”, and therefore steps outside of the perimeter of commonality; and that which is separated and isolated becomes the focus of the threatening predator.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, makes the Federal or Postal employee an uncommon denominator, and thus the target of baseness precisely because such a person has become the anomaly.

Evolutionary Darwinism requires the killing off of DNA structures which threaten the whole; and for the Federal or Postal employee who is no longer able to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, preparing and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through OPM constitutes the uncommon denominator for a future set for tomorrow, beyond the pale of those predators of antiquity whose self-extinguishment is bound by the fate of a shrinking pool of genetic predisposition.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

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

 

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