Federal Employee Medical Retirement: Gaps & Chasms

For those following the blogs of the undersigned attorney, some may have noticed a slight gap between the last time one was posted, and the present one; one may attribute the gap of time to one of the proverbial “technical difficulties” which are beyond one’s control, leaving aside the issue of sanity.

The problem with a “gap” in time is that it has the insidious nature of eventually turning into a chasm; for, again, the slow, incremental nature of time allows us to overlook the slow progression, until you look at it from a distance.  One day turns into a week; a week, into a month; and so the incremental progression of a slight gap widens into a chasm of separability.

In preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS, the difference between a “gap” and a “chasm” is often what the OPM Case Worker will often review and focus upon.  There is always an optimal time-sequence for every event.  Gaps between medical appointments; between the last diagnostic test; more subtle gaps of an inverse order — of how long one has been able to perform all of the essential elements of one’s job despite a particular sort of injury or medical condition.

Gaps tend to become chasms when one is too busy “living life” and trying to attend to all of the responsibilities of a single day.  In preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement, however, it is best to prioritize the issues confronting one’s life, and to attend to the issue of one’s medical condition as aggressively as possible.  For, in the end, the issue of one’s health tends to impact all other aspects of life, and the one gap which should not become a chasm, concerns the health of the individual.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire