FERS Disability Retirement Application Denial: OPM’s Corner of Truth

The term is often applied in economics, where market “forces” represent a quantifiable share of profits and monopolies rule — that such-and-such company has “cornered” the market.  Then, of truth, but in a negative way — that no one has a corner on truth.

In a Federal Disability Retirement case, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management expresses their “corner of truth” in a denial letter — by taking selective extrapolations from medical reports and detailing (sometimes) why certain statements “prove” that a person is not disabled in a Federal Disability Retirement case; or, by asserting that there were no “deficiencies” in one’s past performance reviews; no attendance problems; no conduct issues.

It is a matter of coming up with enough proverbial “holes” in one’s Federal Disability Retirement case, then concluding that the Federal Disability Retirement applicant has “failed” to meet the “criteria” in a Federal Disability Retirement case — and these, in their totality, constitute OPM’s corner of truth.

How to counter this, and what to do to rebut OPM’s corner of truth?  By gathering additional medical documentation; applying the case-law which provides a countervailing view; creating the necessary nexus between the facts, the law, and the medical evidence, and presenting it to OPM in a sufficiently coherent manner as to change OPM’s corner of truth into a truthful tale which tabulates the totality of one’s actual case.

Contact an OPM Medical Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and make sure that OPM’s corner of truth is not the dominant quarter; for, in the end, no one has a corner on truth — but merely one of many corners.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: Walking in Place

That is how lives often feel, isn’t it?  Moving, but not going anywhere; full of activity, but accomplishing nothing; busy, yet failing to achieve any goals; engaged, yet not completing any tasks, etc.  It is the dread of walking in place, of witnessing advancement in multiple other quarters but not in your own corner; of moving, but not in any particular direction.

Medical conditions tend to do that to one’s life; of freezing a person in place, of seemingly endless activity, yet not getting anywhere.  One step forward, two steps back; and as each day is comprised by further setbacks, the failure to meet one’s goals in life becomes a practice in daily frustrations.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have a sense that they are merely “walking in place” because of a medical condition that prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, consider preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application in order to move beyond one’s Federal or Postal career.

Consult with an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law, and stop walking in place and begin the process of moving forward.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire
FERS Disability Retirement Attorney

 

Federal & Postal Employee Disability Retirement: The inner voice

It is always the private conversation that is the most dangerous and unpredictable; for, the voices within are unknown to the surrounding conversations without amidst the public domain, and are most persuasive precisely because the multiple participants come down to a single voice: The “I” or “me” of the inner ego.

The soliloquy is a theatrical device which allows for the audience in a play to hear the “inner” thoughts of a character on stage; sometimes, the actor will stand aside while other characters on stage act “as if” they do not notice the separate thoughts being conveyed to the audience, and both the audience and the stage players engage in a suspension of disbelief while the soliloquy is deliberated; and at other times, the private thoughts are given over to the audience in a lengthy speech — a monologue of sorts, revealing the inner turmoil of a given character.

In real life, such oratory mechanisms are unnecessary, precisely because the voices within remain in a constant monologue of insularity, unimpeded by overzealous listeners who may hear the gossips within.  What voices are spoken within the mind of the wandering individual?  In a crowd, where the cacophony of multiple voices dominate and criss-cross, how many other voices are loudly vying for position within each of the minds that remain silent to one another?

Often, it is the very voices within which are the most dangerous, if only because there are no others countering the logic — or illogic — of the arguments made, and it is precisely because of the singular voice without a countering perspective that makes for greater danger of persuasiveness.

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 one’s Federal or Postal position within the Federal government, the voices within must often remain private and hidden precisely because the voices without lurk about as potential hazards to be avoided and carefully sequestered.

The mere “asking” about filing for Federal Disability Retirement may trigger reactions that are unwanted from the Agency; the questions that begin to be asked, the administrative actions that could be imposed, and the harassment that often follows — these will often force the voices within to remain within.

Consulting with an attorney who specializes in preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is often the first and most important step that a Federal or Postal worker who needs to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits can take; for, the voices within more often than not needs a counter-perspective and guidance beyond the singularly lonely voice of a soliloquy that has no audience but one’s self.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

 

OPM Medical Retirement: Refurbishing the emptiness of existence

It is not quite like fixing up the living room, rearranging the furniture in the family room, or even remodeling the bathroom; for, in the end, the soul that feeds upon the emptiness of existence must needs be replenished with things beyond mere material goods; it must be sustained by the worth and value of that “something” transcending gold, emeralds or even the riches of self-satisfying egocentric accumulations of treasures beyond.

The refurbishing of the emptiness of existence hits upon each of us at some time during our short and brutish presence upon this world; and for some, it is the coldness of responses received that dismays and often destroys.  We can rearrange the furniture on the deck of the proverbial sinking ship, but the cold reality still remains when that foreboding sense of solitary loneliness continues to overwhelm us.

Existence is a reality that we had no voice about; emptiness is a choice that comes about through failings of our own, as when others have determined that friendship, kinship, affinity and affection are not worth pursuing — at least, not with you.

We have a lifetime to foster human relationships, and yet, sadly, most of us keep burning the bridges that have been constructed, severing ties that once bonded one another and set out to destroy any shadows that follow upon the warmth of human linkage.  We like to “remake” ourselves; to “win”, to “defeat”, to be the victor in all worthwhile endeavors.  Then, at the end of life’s work in progress, what are we left with?  Emptiness and loneliness.  Was it all worthwhile?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have this sense of it all — that a medical condition has pervaded, has impacted and prevented you from performing one or more of the essential elements of your Federal or Postal job duties — it may be time to prepare, formulate and file 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.

It may come at the very moment when you feel as if you need to refurbish the emptiness of existence or, more likely, it is because the medical condition that is overwhelming you has forced the issue.  Often, when life appears to need rearranging, it is the other guy who is in the process of refurbishing his or her emptiness of existence, and it has nothing to do with you; you need to do what needs to be done because others will not recognize the value and worth that you have all along been working so fervently to create and maintain.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Lawyer Representation OPM Disability Retirement: The yearning for yesterday

On the spectrum of life, as one advances forward, it is the residue left behind that begins to look so much the better; and in old age, the long expanse of the clouds of memories trailing behind becomes refined with time and faded recollections.  Yesterday keeps looking better and better in proportion to the difficulties faced with the present and anticipated for the future; and the yearning for yesterday is that delicious taste for that which remains resplendent with the memories of nostalgia but may never quite match the reality of that which was left behind.

Memories are funny animals; they are selective, and in our subconscious we tend to erase and extinguish the harsh realities that accompanied the sweetness of childhood joys.  Of that summer day when the winds were warm with the breath of gods and the cackle of laughter filled the air as the ocean waves lapped lazily upon the toes of innocent feet, did the disruption of tiredness or the grumpiness of fatigue remain forgotten as memories became ensconced with jaded perspectives?

The turmoil of today makes yesterday appear as the reflective light of perfection – like the dying star that emits light for us to witness, when in fact death had already occurred billions of years ago.

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 the Federal position or Postal craft (or of a position as a supervisor, manager, etc.), it is that yesterday when the medical condition was yet unknown and the innocence of a future still to be anticipated becomes yearned for.

Federal Disability Retirement is not a “total” solution, by any stretch of the imagination; yet, it does allow for the discontinuation of a feature in one’s life that has remained to create havoc and turmoil – of the mismatch between one’s medical condition and the type of job one is engaged in.  For, is not much of yearning for yesterday exactly that – a sense that there was a continuum of hope and anticipation for a future bright and exciting, and the daily toil of knowing that one can no longer be the same by remaining in the job that has become inconsistent with medical conditions endured and suffered – which is the basis of human tragedy and sadness.

The yearning for yesterday becomes unnaturally magnified the more today is a toil and tomorrow is a basis for angst and sadness; and it is when the Federal or Postal employee recognizes this, and begins to take steps for securing a future with anticipation of tomorrow’s hope, that then filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits becomes a no-brainer.

The yearning for yesterday needs to be replaced with an anticipation for tomorrow’s hopes and dreams, and preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Employee 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 the first steps toward an anticipated tomorrow that can still be brighter than today, and still better than yesterday, as if the yearning for it fades into memories once undecided.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Attorney Representation Federal Disability Retirement: Stress tolerance

More and more, the psychology of human endurance is being studied, evaluated, assessed and judged upon; but in the end, the complexity of the psyche may never be fully known, and even of that knowledge which we think we know, we may be completely in error about.

We perform “stress tests” upon metal beams and overpass bridges in order to determine their viability and structural integrity; and through various engineering tools, we are able to determine whether or not a certain limit of tonnage or pressurized capability to withstand extreme changes in temperature can be “tolerated” before serious damage is done, or modifications, reinforcement or complete replacement becomes necessary.

Why are we unable to gauge the capacity of the human psyche, as well?  What is it about the complexity and endurance levels of the human mind that refuses to provide an objective capability of acceptable levels of stress?  Is it because it will always be individualized, restricted by childhood, adulthood and other hooded experiences that refuse to explain the levels of tolerance otherwise able to be discerned in a beam of wood or a concrete structure?  What does it mean, anyway, to have a “high” stress tolerance level, as opposed to a “low” or “medium” one?  Is it like possessing a gemstone that you carry around in your pocket?  And does it depend upon the “kind” of stress being experienced, or can it all be lumped into one?

Money and debt problems; traumas imparted by the behavior of others; family and marriage difficulties; workplace hostilities and adversarial and contentious encounters; do these all constitute different “kinds” of stresses, and do different people react to them and “deal” with them in variegated ways?  Does it matter whether or not the source of the stress emanates from an outside origin that does not “personally” involve you – such as the danger-based stresses experienced by police officers and firefighters that encompass saving others or deescalating “situations”, but at the end of the day, does not pervade beyond the clock that ticks down to end one’s shiftwork?

And medical conditions – how much of an impact does the physical have with the psyche, and to what extent is the interaction likened to a vicious cycle, where a physical ailment influences the capacity of the psyche to tolerate stresses, and where the mental or emotional stress triggers a person’s physical condition?

Science and medicine have never been perfect disciplines, and it is doubtful if we will ever fully comprehend the complete picture of the impact of stresses in our lives.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, and have come to a point where that medical condition no longer allows the Federal or postal employee to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the question often asked is whether or not “stress” is a viable element or basis for a Federal Disability Retirement application.

That query is a complex one, and can only be answered within the context of a medical diagnosis, the prevailing law, and the options left in the complicated process of preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and consultation with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement law is essential to enhance a successful outcome.

Like so many questions of any level of complexity, “stress” is a complicated issue that cannot easily be addressed without a thorough evaluation by an experienced attorney.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Character Deficits

We all have them; we just never like to admit them to others (which, of course, becomes unnecessary and an irrelevancy if one has a spouse, who is more than willing with energetic bluntness and zeal to volunteer as the one to point them out, quite vocally at that, and without a hint of jealousy at not having them, and with a fury of warning looks darting at crosswinds if one dares to suggest otherwise).  Whether by deep in the recesses of forgotten caverns of childhood psyche damaged in the whirlwinds of growing up, or infected by osmosis by bad company in good times, we will never know.

Freudians believe in such origins within the occipital lobe (or was that post-Freudian or Jungian?); and Aristotle believed in the irrelevancy of such judgments until late in one’s life; but at every stage of a linear progression in life’s trials, we recognize the negation of perfection, and that is clearly represented by the mirror image of the ruling animal of this earth.

Most of us battle throughout our lives – not so much to correct the deficiencies, but to deny, rebut and otherwise patch over any allegations and prosecutorial insinuations that we have them.  In other words, we worry more about the appearance of reputation, as opposed to the essence of the core by which we exist, and to that extent, Plato was right in directing our attention to the universality of Forms, thereby concentrating our attention upon extrapolated natures and thus allowing for the conversation of human folly to be engaged in by third-person accounts and objectified measures.

Otherwise, if we look too closely to the glare of our own reflection, the ugliness of a magnified being would be too much to bear.  Has there ever been a time in history when man held closely to the self-realization of such negations of angelic features?  Perhaps when the onerous hand of belief, the days of torture in Seville when the Grand Inquisitor roamed the homes of suspected idolatry (and spurred the imagination which produced Dostoevsky’s masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov); but even then, we all reserve our suspicions that the closeted man was just as evil, just as mischievous and likely more so in the veil of virtue and virulent self-flagellation against vices known or otherwise hidden.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who experience the modern version of a witch-hunt, it is time to prepare an effective Federal Disability Retirement application in order to escape the wrath of the Agency’s predatory appetite.  The U.S. Postal Service and the Federal Agency are predatory animals who can sniff out the scent of weakened prey; and as the Federal or Postal employee, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, who has a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, necessarily becomes the focus of attention, it becomes an inevitability that issues involving character deficits will arise.

From the agency’s standpoint:  No longer the competent golden boy or wonder girl, but suddenly faults abound and in endless streams of negative assessments.  From the Federal or Postal employee’s perspective:  The continuing battle to prove ourselves.  Is it all worth it?  Or is it just another character deficit that we have to contend with, as we have been doing all of our tireless lives?

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirements: The verse of 1-liners

Can a verse stand alone, isolated in its metrical composition, without preceding or succeeding contextual delineations?  Of what value can the singular have, without the surrounding aggregation of the whole?  Like a scrap or fragment of a larger narrative revelation, of archaeologists and anthropologists working with but a piece of the greater story, the verse of 1-liners forever echoes for a harkening of others to join.

John Donne poetically captured the sense of that isolation, and Thomas Merton wrote a reflective narrative upon that very theme; but there we are, still left with the hollowness of an island’s separation, revealed by a lack, concealed by non-existence. We can, of course, always pretend that nothing came before, and there is no need for the after; but, somehow, such a vacuum of emptiness left alone in the quietude of a vast sea floating amidst the morass of a lonely singularity, doesn’t quite fit the narrative we all seek.

And it is not merely the personhood; it can be in the context of one’s past, where the currency of experiential encounters would lack meaning without an untold yearning for the future, and nothing to rely upon of what we recognize as the prefatory period of living.  Perhaps that is why people seek to unseal adoption records and search for the origins of genetic lineage; of why hope for a more promising tomorrow is necessary for the healthy preservation of every human being; it is because, without a connection to the past, nor a window of hopeful vision for the future, human beings are left with being a mere verse of a 1-liner.

There are monks and hermits in lonely pockets of isolated caverns, where meditation upon the consciousness of self or the wider phenomena of collective discoveries is attained by deliberate seeking of a singularity for solitude’s sake, in hermitages jutting out from cliffs afar; but that is rare, much like the monophonic sacredness of the Gregorian chant, reverberating across the valleys of our own sense of isolation and despair.

Or, perhaps that verse of a 1-liner (note the singular grammatical ascription, now, as opposed to the plural as reflected in the title of this narrative) can possess a gemstone of wisdom, and in that event, it can stand alone in the strength of its own lack of plurality. But for the rest of us, we recognize that it is the support of the greater whole that gives meaning, purpose and relevance to the lives we mold and hope to embrace.

That is why, for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who come to a point of realization and recognition that the medical condition which developed, and which has come to a crossroads where the medical condition prevents the Federal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, and therefore will cut short the career of one’s choice, the option to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is a final admission that one will no longer remain as part of a greater stanza, but become separated as a verse of a 1-liner.

Isolation and separation are concepts alien to a social animal; and for the Federal or Postal employee who must file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM, that concession that the verse of 1-liners has arrived, is indeed a difficult line to accept, but nonetheless a necessary one.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Government Employment: Ruins

We take extraordinary steps just to visit them; of the Parthenon, the Athenian Acropolis; of the Great Wall of China; of unspeaking relics where life once bustled, and still does but in a different way; of mere onlookers to a civilization once vibrant, but now twice removed — first, in the incremental abandonment of a society no longer relevant, and second, by the implicit concession that tourism establishes the death of the substantive content of any collection of structures.  Or of Aleppo, where modern-day devastation intersects with the ruins of old, and where actual suffering echoes throughout the ancient cascades where antiquity overwhelms the current screams of flesh and blood.

Why visit ruins when they are mere shadows of a former civilization unable to speak of its gradual decay and deterioration?  For, it is not the crumbling structures of haunting architectural tenacity which represents the truth behind the concealment of that which we visit to observe; it is the hidden narrative of human suffering which fails to utter the words in silence.  And what of lives untold?

What “ruins” have we failed to visit, right in one’s home, in one’s neighborhood, or just across the street?  Why be a world traveler, when the devastation imposed upon those who depended upon the promises given and assurances uttered mean nothing but some slices of memories of a yore-time of laughter and gaiety?  Is that what life is all about — of a good time here, a shared cackle of laughter in drunken states of unspoken ruination?

In the end, it matters not of crumbling structures and photographs taken of cavernous hollows in distant places where footwears matter; we trample great lengths to ooh and ahhh, and snap shots to send back to the origin of our trail of selfish devastation; but it is the ruins of human lives which touch upon the essence of a human soul, and not the marble and concrete which we gather to observe.  Flesh and blood rarely bespeak of decay and crumbling, but for the wrinkles of time which gather around the furrows of brows and corners of unsmiling lips.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who feel the devastation of a medical condition, such that the medical condition cuts short the career of intended purposes and teleological foundations of a future untold; the consequence of other actions, the worker sitting beside, or the supervisor behind the private door of an office uninviting, can exponentially increase the devastation already felt by the disabling condition itself.

The tendency is to become a tourist of sorts, by standing about like so many detached onlookers — when, in fact, the solution is to become a part of the society itself.  Preparing, formulating and filing 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, takes you out of the realm of mere tourism and into the arena of actual living.

Visiting the ruins of another culture is one thing; allowing for the ruination of one’s own career, future and livelihood is quite another.  To be ruined; to visit a ruin; to allow for ruination; all such forms of linguistic allowances become stalwarts of reality unless you take the necessary steps to advance forward.  Preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application to be filed with OPM is the first step towards ensuring that one will not become another ruin to be photographed, but a living, vibrant entity who has escaped the devastation of an ahistorical context.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire
OPM Medical Retirement Attorney

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Cavalier extinctions

We focus much on lost species, forever erased at a rate of untold apocryphal dimensions, as if the deletion of undiscovered DNA material might never be recovered, and thus for once, we worry about things which we have never known ascribed as that which “could” have saved us from our own extinguishment, all the while ignoring the plight of human detritus all around us.  We do that with fading civilizations, too, don’t we?

We argue for egalitarianism, impartiality, and for all things being of equivalency in value and worth; but, somehow, the “primitives” remind us of that romanticized notion which touched our nerves, even as Rousseau created a fictional “State of Nature” in which we lived in complete harmony (but for those few who, through brutish force and uncivilized conduct, forced us into an unwilling social contract in order to aggregate our weaknesses against a Hobbsian Leviathan for self-preservation and protective numerical advantage) and to which we pay homage in childhood fantasies.  And so we strive to pursue our own environmental agendas, as if we can police the universe against the insanity of our own making; all the while, we engage in cavalier extinctions, ourselves, though we may name it by another identity.

We form and drop relationships; we friend, defriend, add and delete with a push of a button; we even divorce and break up so-called lifetime commitments, with the cavalier explanation that it is “better” to live in harmonious consonance than to subject the innocent to daily ravages of our own termpermantal tumults.  An electronic screen, whether on a tabletop, laptop or a smartphone, can easily bring the bright glare of activity as the blank blackness of nothingness.

That is why extinguishment of purported “friends” can occur just as easily as engaging artifices of friendships; the button itself determines the substance and depth of any such relationship.  It was hard enough actually know and tolerating people; it is easier still, to know them on the tablet of a screen, and not have to contend with irritants of behavioral eccentricities.

On the spectrum of human growth, we are stunting ourselves by relegating the mechanism and tools for human conduct to mere words and responsive utterances on lighted screens.  The tools which we provide to the innocents, to develop those traits for successful human interaction, are diminished by the limited resources available via distance interaction.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, and who by necessity must consider preparing, formulating and 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, the notion that there is a negation of estimable empathy, sympathy, and just simple human caring, becomes a glaring reality too quickly, too forcefully, and with a dosage of untold reality.

Will it only get worse?  Probably.  As the new crop of managers and supervisors who have little contact with actual relationships, but whose voided perspective has been formed by online services of gratuitous and dubious authenticity, the level of understanding and mechanisms for human compassion become exponentially diminished.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management for a Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is not a mere choice of optional engagement; it is spurred by necessity and human tragedy.  But beware, as this brave new world of cavalier extinctions will bring forth the worst in the unclaimed losses of genetic materials, where the Darwinian principles seem to finally win out in a battle of fierce and unwitting conflicts for the survival of the fittest — or meanest.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire