FERS Medical Retirement Law: The “EU” Prefix

Good; well; uttering sounds which portend of good omen; and of the root word of “euphemism”, it comes from the Greek word, “phemos”, or “speech”; or of the word, “Euthanasia”, the word after the “eu” is derived from the Greek root, “thanatos”, or death.

And thus do we alter and modify the very meaning of the words by attaching the prefix, “eu”, and turning a negative concept into a positive one: of speech which could be harmful or derisive, into an utterance of a more positive outlook; and of death — that ultimate end which portends of agony and pain  — into a painless sleep into that eternal darkness.  It is the prefix attached upon a word which can turn the negative into a positive.

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, preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under the current Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is tantamount to place the “eu” prefix onto your life and career, where the medical condition itself has become the negative impact upon your life and career, and where the “eu” prefix can turn that around and make it into a positive circumstance.

Contact an Federal Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and begin the process of attaching a positive prefix onto a negative circumstance by become eligible for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS.

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: President’s Day 2022

There have been many of them.  Originally, this holiday was meant to commemorate and recognize our “first” — George Washington, born on February 22, 1732.  It is a habit for nations to acknowledge “firsts”, as well, we do so in our personal lives.  The “first step” of a toddler; the first day of class; the first kiss; the first time-X; and many more, besides.

More recently, the day has come to recognize all of our presidents, good, bad or indifferent.  In modernity, it has come to be a contentious point of conflict: From whether we should celebrate the life of a slave owner, to why we should give recognition to those presidents considered as less than honorable — the spectrum of opinions on the matter remains vociferous and vibrant.

For a democracy (yes, yes, we can quibble as to the difference without a distinction in contrast to a “Constitutional Republic”), perhaps that is a healthy matter, for the raging debate and intellectual discourse is always a positive characteristic reflecting involved citizens.  Regardless, let’s take the day for what it is worth, and enjoy the time remaining in each of our lives by pausing to reflect in these difficult times.

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.

 

Qualifying for FERS Disability Retirement: How Hard is It?

That is a question which is entirely dependent upon the individual facts and circumstances of the case at hand.

Everyone would like to believe that his or her Federal Disability Retirement case is a “sure thing”.

Some attorneys, perhaps, offer a “money-back guarantee” — but what is such a guarantee worth?  To merely return the money, or some portion of it, if a case has failed to be approved?  How hard do you think such an attorney will fight for your case if it gets denied at the First Stage of the process and it appears that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is going to fight to deny your case at every level of the administrative process?

There are few, if any, “slam dunk” cases, and OPM is a Federal Agency which guards its territory as if their life depended upon it — and well they should, as every Federal Disability Retirement application should be scrutinized to the extent that each must meet the legal criteria for approval and valid viability.  But that is where the dispute and the battleground exists: It is the interpretation of the law and its interpretive application to each individual case.

Contact an OPM Disability Attorney who will fight for an approval of your Federal Disability Retirement case — one who has the experience, wisdom and fortitude to aggressively pursue your Federal Disability Retirement benefits, no matter how hard it is.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement Benefits: Future Dreaded

We often avoid the subject; of futures yet to be contemplated and images triggered by fears; of questions pertaining to old age, retirements, early onset of dementia and the fearful “A” word — Alzheimer’s.

Are such fates certainties?  Or, do we just shrug them off with a flippant side-step, like the partner dancing with a clumsy other who is nimble enough to avoid being stepped on, making dancing with the stars seemingly like a cakewalk.  “We can always get hit by a truck tomorrow, so why worry about the day after?”  Is that a philosophy of life which can long endure, or a truism which guarantees our fated dread, anyway?

Medical conditions of any form and type remind us of the future dreaded; it points to our mortality, our vulnerabilities and our lack of security in this world where communities are non-existent, empathy remains in short supply and families break apart as easily as the crumbling crust upon an overcooked apple pie.

Future dreaded — it is a feeling felt at the pit of one’s stomach, and nightmares which shake one from the slumber of midnight terrors; and, in the end, we feel sorrow for ourselves in an echo of soliloquies where a singular voice calls for help and no one is there to listen.  The bleakest of ends does not need to be one where the worst fears are realized.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition necessitates consideration of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the future dreaded is the one around the corner, triggered by the increasing hostility of an agency or the postal facility which sees no future in your contribution or membership in that community of workers which once provided a sense of security.

When your medical condition has come to a point where you can no longer perform all of the essential elements of your job, call a FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.  For, in the end, the future dreaded is often one based upon lack of understanding, and it is knowledge of the process of Federal Disability Retirement which can feed the information necessary to prepare for a future brightened, and not a future dreaded.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Fate and fatalism

When people talk about “fate”, they must mean something more than what they actually state in an explanation.  People often misspeak, of course, or explain with justification without much thought put into the narrative given.  So, when a person says, for example, that “X happened,” and when asked why, the response is often, “Oh, it was just fate.  It was meant to be.”  What can that possibly mean?

To say that X occurred because it was “fated”, or was “meant to be”, is no different than to say that an apple is a fruit because it’s not an orange; it is a mere tautology that appears to give an explanation for the occurrence or justification for its designated category of identification, but provides no greater insight after the delineated discourse than before.

So, people must mean something else – perhaps (and this is pure conjecture and attempting to attribute kindness to an otherwise empty explanation) what is meant is that there is a Greater Being who intended and planned it; that, life in general retains a purposive direction, or that an underlying teleological undercurrent maintains a semblance of significance and relevance.

On the other hand, most people who talk about “fate”, when queried further, don’t quite believe in its cousin – fatalism.  The latter is the doctrine that things are bound by a predetermined sequence, however it may be fashioned, and one is unable to change the course of history.

We all like to believe that we have some “say so” in the process of our lives – that free will exists (even if one believes in the contradictory notion of an omniscient being who is omnipotent, as well) and that our choice in the matter makes some sort of a difference.  Such a notion, we often believe, makes a difference; otherwise, why even try?

Thus, people who believe in “fate” can be said to be “positive” looking, in that events that have occurred were as a result of “fate” in the sense that it turned out that way because it was meant to be so, without getting caught up in the negativism of “fatalism”, which more denotes a sense of helplessness and inability to have any say-so in one’s future.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the key in preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application is likened to believing in “fate”, but refrain from falling into the trap of fatalism.

You do have a choice in the matter; how you formulate the Federal Disability Retirement application does make a difference; and while you may not have much control over your medical conditions, the choices you make in preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application will have some relevance and significance for your future, so long as you approach it as fated, without a sense of fatalism.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Attorney Representation Federal Disability Retirement: The running of days

How does it happen?  Where did it all go?

One day, you are a young man or woman, full of promises and hopes, dreams that defy any limitation or restriction of potentiality yet to be unleashed; and the next, an old man or woman, rocking back and forth, awaiting the grim reaper with its scythe and faceless chasm of darkness and despair.  In between, of course, there is a memory – of a blur, a constant rush from this activity to that, of emergencies, turmoil and tumults, of the proverbial peaks and valleys; in short, it is called “living life”.

It is the running of days, one upon the other, one mixed into the two, then weeks, months and years, and finally decades that turn into a half-century.  Was it all worth it?  Did we stop and perform that salient act that became so popular during the 60s – of stopping to “smell the roses”?  And if we did not, what wisdom was gleaned from the lack thereof, the absence of pause, the semicolon of interludes?

Or, did we follow upon the admonishment stated in that 1974 folk song by Harry Chapin, “Cat’s in the Cradle”, where all we did was to teach our kids to be “just like me” and roam the universe in search of meaningless trope and allowing for the running of days to overtake us?

Or is it simply that our memories fail to serve us, and there were many days and some months where enjoyment, relationships and meaningful engagements were in fact embraced, but that the living of life often erases, smears and obscures such that our recollection is so cluttered with valuable connections and so consumed with overflowing “moments” that we just cannot even contain them anymore?

The running of days is ultimately just a metaphor, like running water and leaks that just keep on; but it is one that sometimes needs fixing, and it is the repair work that often cannot be performed within a lifetime of such disrepair.  Regrets hit us all, but the greatest one that never seems to close the wounds of time is that one where time was wasted upon frivolous acts of unrepentant entanglements.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the other proverbial saying is that one which refers to “spinning one’s wheels”, and yet knowing that no good will come out of staying put.

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, may be the only solution left to a career that has come to a standstill.

Medical conditions tend to trigger a running of days – where the chronic pain or the illness extended seems to make no difference or distinction whether it’s a weekday or a weekend, and the only way out of such a mirage of misgivings is to “move on”; and as filing an OPM Disability Retirement is often the best and only option that can accomplish that, given the timeframe that it now takes to get an approval at any stage of the bureaucratic process, it is probably a good idea to file sooner than later in order to get ahead of the running of days.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Separation & Retirement from Federal Government Employment: The Architect of Awe

There are murals of inspired souls, touched by a hand guided by forces unknown; of vaulted ceilings and high arches, and mosaics which are crafted, painted and tediously combined; and as one approaches such architectural wonders, the eyes are lifted upwards toward the heavens in such a natural order of elevation that there is no pause for self-consciousness.

Contrast that to the technology of modernity, where huddled masses with sauntering forms and stooped shoulders look down upon the glare of Smartphones, Tablets and the keyboard of laptops; the eyes never wander but within the confined parameters of a rectangular screen, and only in furtive movements of quickened and imperceptible annoyances.

The irony, of course, where the two intersect — the grandeur of architectural brilliance with the future of technological acumen — is when the tourist brings the Smartphone with the self-contained video and camera apparatus in order to gawk at the Medieval Renaissance of antiquity, but never views with the naked eye, but always through the lens for Instagram and Facebook positing.  It is, ultimately, of our posture which is most telling, and that which draws the human eye — in a downward trajectory, or with an upward inspiration.

Once, we used to build for eternity and the heavens, whereas of today we huddle in forlorn consternation over glowing screens which dull the mind and blind the eye to the created world around us.  And what of other elements in our lives?  Do they uplift, or denigrate such that we become downtrodden specimens of another’s playful cruelty?  Does the place where we spend the most time draw us as an architect of awe, or diminish the soul by whips and partial tears?

Work — that place and endeavor which occupies the majority of our time — should always lift up, and never demean; and like human relationships of linear poses (unlike the vertical one with gods and angelic superstitions), the combination should always aggregate to a greater quantity than the quality of singularity.

That is why, for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who discover that the present situation they find themselves in has become untenable because the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, and such a state has engendered resentment, denigration and an opposition to constructive advancement, preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, becomes the preferred alternative to continuation in the present state of despair.

Going out on an OPM Disability Retirement for the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is never the first choice, and may in fact be the last; but the option is almost always one based upon the survival of the soul, where the architect of awe is no longer present in a world which has seemingly abandoned its teleological relish for life, but where work has come to represent harassment, denigration and demeaning anguish, and where the choices have limited the fragile compartment of the soul and thus the alternative is to suffer silently in a world gone mad and maddeningly unsympathetic to the plight of that traveler whom no one has invited from the coldness of the world.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement from Federal Employment: Far-Flung Universes

Each generation tells a generic story reflective of the times; and thus did the Great Depression era produce movies and epics with undertones of escapism from the harsh realities of life; of the 60s, the fear of nuclear holocaust and the confrontation of the Cold War; of the following decade revealing the hesitation for  technology and its pervasive intrusion into the privacy of our lives; and so on, so the anxiety, fear and loathing goes.

Throughout, people escape in their own private ways, through daydreaming, imaginative time-travels as in the classic short story by James Thurber depicted in, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”; and other times in nightmares and dreams controlled only through the breaches in our subconscious.  It often seems as if the far-flung dimensions and dominions of hope save us only through living in those other-world universes, if only for a moment, a period, a time and a day.

Vacations and weekends only delay the inevitable, and then the harshness of who we are, what we have become, and where we are going, all come crashing back, like the rolling waves of thunderous whitecaps which bellow in the echoing chambers of the far recesses of our minds.

For the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to threaten one’s livelihood, resulting in the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service beginning subtle (or not so) noises of increasing pressures through adverse actions, like unpleasant abdominal groans which should remain private but echo out into the public domain, it may be time to escape the escapism of the alternate universe and become “real” by considering 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.

Other and far-flung universes offer hope beyond dreams, but when the dream is shattered by the progressively deteriorating forces of a present-day reality, it is time to travel back to the origins of reality, and face a full-frontal confrontation of what the pragmatic steps of day-to-day concerns must by necessity bring, and begin to prepare, formulate and file for OPM Disability Retirement benefits.

Alternate dimensions indeed reflect the times one lives in, and may even represent a pleasant moment in time, a respite away from the harshness of today’s reality; but when the awakening occurs, one must shake away the cobwebs of fantasy, and face the serious concerns of one’s angst-filled day, as the medical condition will not go away, the Federal agency and the U.S. Postal Service will not fade, and the fight to survive will remain as real today as it will be tomorrow.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement: Word Additions

When viewing a landscape, does the utterance of words add anything to the beauty or desolation?  When rage wells up within a tormented soul, do words which convey a rational thought process ameliorate the temperament in any way?  Whether, in the evolutionary progression of one’s biological apparatus, the appearance of language beyond fundamental communication (e.g., for advanced warning of dangers, conveying of location, and similarly basic devices of informational immediacy) enhances the meaningfulness of the thing itself, is a question beyond mere pedantic interest.

Does a person add anything to the beauty of a red dawn, by describing it with words and conceptual constructs?  Or, better yet, do we glean any greater understanding by descriptive means, or does it merely camouflage the exquisiteness of the thing itself?  There are exceptions.

Medical conditions, and the need to understand their origin, impact, treatment modalities and prognosis allow for individuals to makes decisions based upon information gathered.  The pain itself, or the destructive and progressively debilitating nature of a medical condition, may not require descriptive devices of deciphering linguistic dalliances; but for the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker who must map out one’s future course of actions, the words which one chooses to employ can make all the difference in the conceptual world we live in.

Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit available to all Federal and Postal employees who find themselves with a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job.

For Federal and Postal employees under FERS (which most Federal and Postal employees are under, inasmuch as CSRS and CSRS Offset employees are becoming rarer by the year), a minimum of 18 months of Federal Service must be accumulated; but once that threshold is met, it is the evidentiary sufficiency based upon the legal criteria as mandated by statute, the courts, and the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, which must be complied with through the use of words.

In viewing beauty, words rarely add; in experiencing feelings, language often merely complicates; but in engaging a complex bureaucratic process, words and conceptual constructs add to the future viability of one’s capacity to meet the complex challenges of an ever-changing world.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire