In preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS or CSRS, the concern often revolves around the compounding effect of a medical condition, when a Federal or Postal employee continues to persevere in performing duties which clearly exacerbate and exponentially magnify the originating medical condition and the manifesting symptomatologies.
Whether as secondary depressive symptoms, or as increasing anxiety, uncontrollable panic attacks; chest pains; radiculopathy; sedation which occurs from medication or lack of sleep over weeks and weeks, resulting in profound and overwhelming fatigue; the problems of unmitigated and unaccommodated medical conditions become worse, and begin to attain a “hump-back” effect, where the Federal or Postal worker attempts to increase the productivity output by working that much harder, ignoring the originating medical condition yet, concurrently, becoming more and more suspicious that the Supervisor, the coworker, the “others” in the Agency, are recognizing and quietly commenting upon the deteriorating work ethic of the Federal or Postal employee.
Most medical conditions, precisely because of the inherent nature of the medical condition itself, cannot be accommodated. What medical conditions need most are the self-evident and obvious, but which society lacks the patience for: treatment, time for recuperation, and space away from the daily stresses of the multi-tasking workplace.
Disability Retirement criteria under FERS & CSRS requires that a medical condition last for a minimum of 12 months. Such a requirement is rarely difficult to meet. For, in this world of stress-work-productivity-result-orientation, one rarely has time to pause for a medical condition. Such lack of pause, however, only increases the likelihood of the compounding effect of a once-singular medical condition, which over a short period of time, progressively deteriorates into a “hump-back” of multiple conditions, exacerbated by stress, magnified by an environment which has little or no time for such blips as the sorrow of the human condition.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Filed under: Theory and Practice: Tips and Strategies for a Successful Application | Tagged: accepting opm disability clients all across america, applying for federal disability, civil service disability retirement, compounding effects of illnesses on federal employees, condition that prevents to perform the essential functions, deteriorating effects of a medical condition in a federal employee, deteriorating medical condition and the federal employee, essential elements of jobs, Federal Disability, federal disability lawyer, federal disability retirement, FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement Blog, fers disability blog, FERS disability retirement, how long the medical condition should last?, law firm representing clients in opm disability law all across america, legal services for federal and postal workers all across america, long-term and compounding effects on a primary medical condition, minimum time a condition should last to qualify for fers disability retirement, nationwide representation of federal employees, opm disability claims and medical effects of a once-singular medical condition, OPM disability retirement, OPM First Stage Disability Application, owcp disability retirement, Postal disability, Postal Service disability, secondary medical conditions and fers disability, USPS disability retirement benefits, when your conditions get worse while at the federal workplace, why medical conditions get worse in many postal employees, why some medical conditions can not be accommodated in the federal workplace | Leave a comment »