Federal Disability Retirement Law: Goodness in Dark Times

It is the famous question brought to the fore by Hannah Arendt and others in the aftermath of WWII.  The trial of Eichmann brought some clarity to the issue; of the banality of evil; of the trial of human goodness in contrast to questioning the existence of evil.  Faith was said to be lost in the aftermath; for, how could a God who purports to be pure goodness, allow for such evil to dominate?

Camus warned of humanity’s descent into further darkness; that the mass concentration camps were not the end, but merely the beginning of wider and more ferocious depravity.  The question really was never how there could be goodness in dark times; but rather, why or how there could be goodness at all.

Since WWII, modernity has strived — albeit, rather in a fumbling and ineffective way — to reeducate children to engender greater empathy for one another; to stamp out (or at least, divert) man’s inherent “evil” within; to try and prevent the predilection towards violence, etc. Then, of course, the Internet was created; Social Media exploded (or imploded); the pandemic exponentially heightened; and the rest is history — of dark times in greater numbers; the selfishness of the ultra-wealthy; the rise of autocratic regimes and the reemergence of greater evil.

In the end, it is not the question of goodness in dark times which matters, but rather, how to extend, to the extent possible, some iota of goodness within the times we live in.  Laws, in the end, and the abiding of laws, are the only hope we have.

For Federal and Postal employees needing to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under the current Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, goodness in dark times is defined by the ability to manage your life despite the dark times.  Chronic medical conditions can be overwhelming and appear to present a period of unending dark times in your life.  Fortunately, the laws governing FERS Disability Retirement provide some amount of goodness and point to a brighter future.

Contact a FERS Medical Retirement Attorney, that is a legal expert who specializes in Federal Worker Disability Retirement law, and consider that there is still some goodness in dark 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.

 

Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) Disability Retirement: Ostensibly

Apparently; on the face of it; in all appearances.  Isn’t that how OPM views all medical disability retirement cases?

It is as if the “medical specialist” opens each file before reviewing it, with a notation under his or her breath, of: “Ostensibly”.  And so the challenge is on — of persuading from the presumptive world of the “Ostensible” to the world of approval where appearances are turned into reality.

How does one do that?  Why are some Federal Disability Retirement applications more persuasive than others?

Of course, there will always be the “irrefutable” cases; then, some cases which fall in the “probably no chance” category, simply because there is not enough medical evidence to persuade; then, as with most cases, somewhere in the middle kingdom where the coalescence of medical evidence, the law, agency actions or inaction, with a dash of concurrent and parallel legal issues must be all taken into consideration in their aggregate evidentiary presentation.

Ostensibly.  By all appearances.  That is the challenge — to persuade OPM that the ostensible is the real.

Contact an OPM Disability Retirement Attorney who deals only with OPM Disability claims, and begin the process of putting together an ostensibly viable Federal Disability Retirement case and turn it into the reality which brings about an OPM approval.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

FERS Disability Retirement from the OPM: Silent Suffering

It is now an outdated concept; applied to generations past, “silent suffering” was something people once endured, often within the context of internal turmoil, domestic abuse, childhood neglect or, worse, of skeletons in the closet that haunted a damaged psyche and repressed within layers upon layers of hurt and hatred.

In modernity, people have been encouraged to express themselves, to engage in therapeutic self-revelations, etc.  To remain “silent” is deemed unhealthy; to “suffer”, unnecessary; and thus to combine the two evils and to live in “silent suffering” is to unhealthily and unnecessarily inflict damage to one’s self.

Yet, that is precisely what many Federal and Postal employees under FERS do — of engaging in silent suffering by continuing to work despite a chronic medical condition which prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job.

Such silent suffering further damages one’s case for a Federal Disability Retirement annuity by continuing to make it “appear” as if everything is fine, including receiving glowing performance reviews, leading the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to conclude: Well, if your agency believes you are doing a fine job, then how can you claim that you cannot do your job?

Consult with a Federal Disability Attorney who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law, and consider whether — even in modernity — you should still continue to engage in that old way of silent suffering.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: The mind’s bookshelf

Entertainment is a peculiar thing in human psychology: happiness accompanies its anticipation, but during the process of “being entertained”, do we recognize our own joy, or are we lost in the suspension of our own inner world while being completely oblivious to the suffering around us?

We toil day in and day out with a singular goal, held by many, to enjoy a period of respite and entertainment — of becoming lost in a movie; of going to a play; of putting headphones on and listening to a favorite song, piece or series of favorites; of pulling from the mind’s bookshelf an episode of imaginative adventures or a wonderland of a dream’s figment.

Entertainment, joy, happiness and contentment are the ingredients of life’s admixture of troubles, trials and turpentine creations in a universe of chocolate-ice-cream-not-quite-right, ups and downs and joining and break-ups; it is a mixed up world where everyone is trying to extract an ounce of pleasure when the last cupful has already been taken.  Then, there is the capacity of the human mind that has just had enough — where too much bombardment of stimuli leads one to withdraw, become reclusive, and seek the solitude of one’s own soliloquy of minds.  It is a rather peculiar concept, is it not?

To withdraw within the mind’s bookshelf — that corner of studied solitude where others cannot share, and only the loneliness of one’s self-induced privacy allows for an entrance and exit to the backrooms of an unlit alcove that is marked “private”, and where no admittance is allowed except by exclusive invitation only.  It is when even the mind’s bookshelf is toppled by the troubled waters of the world that too much stress, too much stimuli and way, way too much intrusiveness begins to overflow.

That is what a medical condition tends to do — for, when it becomes chronic and begins to gnaw at even the privacy of the mind’s bookshelf, then the unbearable nature of one’s condition requires a change.  For Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition begins to invade even the privacy of the mind’s bookshelf, it is time to 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.

When even the last refuge from life’s turmoil has been invaded and violated — of an inability to attain any restorative sleep; when profound fatigue overwhelms; when chronic pain becomes unrelenting; when one’s focus, concentration and ability to retain even a semblance of cognitive acuity is progressively being lost; then, the inconsistency between one’s essential elements of a position and the medical condition becomes quite clear, and it becomes necessary to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

Joy of life comes from having the key to the mind’s bookshelf, and when that is no longer possible, it is time to file for OPM Disability Retirement.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Retirement for Mental or Physical Incapacity: Fear and trepidation

The first may lead to the second; the second, exacerbating the first, may establish a vicious cycle where fear is feeding the trepidation and the trepidation continues to exponentially increase the fear because non-action only expands the tension that grows without containment or restriction.  It is, indeed, a conundrum of paralysis; and the will to change, alter or modify necessitates action, but action cannot come before fear is vanquished and trepidation is overcome.

This is a dysfunctional society.  There is a lack of stability, and perhaps the instability is as a result of the greater freedoms and liberties enjoyed.  But where a culture and society are founded upon unfettered liberty, there must be some internal mechanism that contains the extent of choices offered and the pathways opened.

Once upon a time, ice cream flavors numbered within the fingers of a hand, or perhaps both hands; but once the Pandora’s box of alternatives was unleashed, the paralysis that follows betrays the fragile nature of a human psyche.  Fear and trepidation go hand-in-hand precisely because it is an insular, self-contained cycle of self-immolation feeding each upon the other.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition is beginning to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of his or her job, it is understandable that fear and trepidation continue to paralyze any movement away from a career that has been invested with such high costs.  The choices here, however, are limited. You can stay put; walk away and abandon; or file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.  It is the last option which is normally the most viable, the most vibrant and the one to pursue because it protects and preserves the future security of one’s livelihood.

Do not let fear and trepidation paralyze and overwhelm; a consultation with an experienced attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement law is often the first best step in moving forward.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The Unending Cycle of Relapse

It is merely from a perspective of combined incrementalism with an admixture of hope and self-delusion that people talk about a “relapse”.  The plain fact is, most medical conditions follow a fairly predictable and linear path of progressive deterioration, with critical junctures of static chronicity, and marked by charted moments of quietude interrupted with a fury of vengeful prose.  If a business graph were to depict the pathway of most medical conditions, the ups and downs of the jagged lines would mesmerize and confuse us with contemptuous puzzlement.

We assure ourselves that we are “getting better”, when all the while we continue to ignore, procrastinate, explain and justify all of the indicators and warning signs of downward decline.  An increase in the medication regimen, explained by mere temporary need; greater pain, with reference to some minor activity recently engaged in; and so the self-justifying conundrums are thrown as explanatory deliberations, when the bodies suffer so despite the words offered as sacrificial animals to the gods of thunder.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, this phenomena of parsing words despite facts which fly in the face of reality, is often born of necessity and a false image of self, society and servitude to the “mission of the agency” or the Constitutionally-born importance of the U.S. Postal Service (circa Benjamin Franklin, thank you).  But health has a funny way of  defying self-justifications of ineffective prose, and poetry and thought never curtails the unending cycle of relapse, precisely because what we do to our minds, bodies and souls accounts for little when misuse and unintended abuse prevail.

For the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker who fails to make one’s health a priority first, then all other considerations of secondary import, the need to file 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, often becomes a victim of such unending cycle.

To suffer a “relapse” is merely an attempt to justify that which the body or mind was merely telling you all along.  Yes, sometimes the quiet whispers in the deadened silence of night can be ignored and disregarded; but it is those haunting quietudes which perturb and disturb despite our best efforts to ignore, which roar back to engulf us when least we expect.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement: That Sudden Urgency

It happens all of the time in life; we leave things to fester, then suddenly the matter becomes important, then vital, creeps into a state of urgency, until it finally develops into a crisis.  The underlying impetus is based upon procrastination; the psychological explanation is deemed avoidance behavior, and the reality of experience merely recognizes it as the nature of human living.

We ask ourselves in wonderment, where did all of the intermediate phases dissipate to?  How did the incremental steps and half-steps in reaching this point of sudden urgency disappear unnoticed?  It is tantamount to children and puppies; that exuberance now gone, when yesterday they were seen with the innocence of youth and folly running through the field.  How does time suddenly evaporate and necessity emerge and develop into the here and now?  Is it mere hope of resolution, or laziness neglected upon a return of minimal investment?

Time was that once, in childhood years of visionary glories, we sought refuge in the calluses of existence where others took care and nurtured, and suddenly those “others” were no longer around, and growing up meant that responsibilities became our personal ownership, and we had to embrace those very things long neglected like faded photographs left discarded in the garden heaps of memories and fears, loathing and angst.

Medical conditions tend to be like that.  They are conditions of human existence which require attending to, and tending to like gardens left dying on vines of eternity; and suddenly it becomes clear that no one else really cares, but for self, family and the closest of friends.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have suffered for many months, and perhaps years, because of a medical condition, such that the medical condition impacts the ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, there comes a day when the realization of reality suddenly comes upon us, and there is no more tomorrow, no room left for delay, and no time reserved for excuses.

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, is a long and arduous process involving multiple levels and stages of a bureaucratic morass, and it is this long and hard road of an administrative nightmare which must be dealt with when the sudden urgency of recognition and realization hits home.  And as home is where the heart and hearth are, so finding that restorative space of grace and fulfillment requires planning, deliberation, and a will to win, especially when dealing with a Federal agency such as OPM which views all medical conditions and Federal Disability Retirement applications with analytical suspicion.

Finding that it is suddenly necessary to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits did not become an urgent state of being overnight; but through many nights and days of toil, it crept upon us like that unseen monster laying wait under the bed in the childhood fears of yesteryear, where protective mothers and fearless fathers long ago left for destinations still unknown, leaving the wide-eyed child of former days to fend for him or herself in this world of cavernous carnivores and restless winds of change.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire 
OPM Disability Retirement Attorney

  

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Those Nagging Questions

“What if” questions constantly haunt, and persistently undermine.  They are the questions which people repetitively ask of themselves; and yet, like questions in Philosophy spanning multiple millenniums, they defy answers, and merely trouble the mind.  Or, as Bertrand Russell once quipped, If such questions continue to bother, it is probably a problem of indigestion.

“What if I had done X?”  “What if I go in today and tell the Supervisor Y?”  “What if I ask for an accommodations by doing Z?”  “What if…”  The game of “what if” serves to delay and obfuscate; it kicks the proverbial can down the dusty road of oblivion, and rarely solves the concrete problem facing the individual engaged in the meaningless query.  Almost always, the solution is instead to take affirmative steps towards reaching a goal.

Experience serves to defy repetition of questions left unanswered, and the best way to satisfy the linguistic hypothetical is to act in accordance with one’s need.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition is impacting one’s ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s job, the questions of “What if” may abound:  “What if I am able to recover in 6 months?”  “What if my agency fires me?”  “What if the doctor will not support me?”

Some such questions are valid; others, emanating from fear and lack of knowledge.  As gathering information is the key to satisfying questions unanswered, it is well to make inquiries and obtain facts as opposed to opinions and conjectures.

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, is a major step in the Federal or Postal employee’s life; but the alternatives are often untenable and leaves one with an empty hand to continue asking those unanswerable questions which leave the stomach churning with fears, doubts and unresolved issues.

Preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM as a concrete step in taking an affirmative hold of one’s life, future and undiminished aspirations.  And like grabbing a handful of sand in the dry desert of questions, to ask and query without a rudder to direct one’s efforts, is to meander through life with a blindfold.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Blowing in the Wind

Of course, the reference recognized unmasks the age or generation from whence one comes, and the formal wording without the apostrophe is to allow spellcheck a rest and curtail the red underline.  It is the 1962 Dylan song, representing questions unanswered, answers made complex by society, and sought-after refrains which defy conformity.

Where is the answer to be found, and what can the wind represent?  Can Cliffs Notes Study Guides provide for a true education?  Or like chimpanzees in a beauty contest besides kids of comparable intelligence, is it merely regurgitation of rote memory, or some semblance of sociological dementia?  As the wind is ungraspable, and embraces and engulfs voices shouting and demanding, so the questions asked and the answers given are as ephemeral as the shifting streams of consciousness.

Nature has a way of humbling, of letting us know that though we aspire to become angels who can fly with knowledge and necromancy, with waving wands and cauldrons of witch’s brew in feeble attempts of arrogance and self-puffing, the reality is that our knowledge is limited, our capacity for growth is stunted, and the self-imposed mediocrity we generally follow reflects the tiredness of a man’s soul.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition is beginning to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, questions always abound, and answers sought are often disjointed and contradictory.

If there is an area of knowledge which needs to be precise, it is of “the law”, as people rely upon information certainty, and lack of knowledge and answers which blow in the wind merely confuse and confound.  The test of reliance should always be based upon a systematic history of sound judgment and accurate discourse.  Does the source provide reliable information?  Does it appear cogent, comprehensive and of common sense?

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, can be a daunting first step, for it means a change in one’s life, a step into another direction, and a leap of faith for an uncertain future.  There will always be questions to be answered, but one should never consider demanding answers to those queries via Dylan’s methodology of asking the shiftings winds of Nature, but by searching out a reliable source in this indeterminate universe of questions asked, and answers unforgiven.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire