FERS Medical Retirement: The Weekend (Weakened) Goal

Is that what we live for?  Is it sufficient?

Once, in youth, the thought was: Each day will be lived as preciously as any other day.  Thus the phrase, “Seize the Day” (or, if you want to sound somewhat intellectual, the latin phrase, “Carpe Diem”).  It is meant to remind us that tomorrow may not come at all and to live to the fullest that which is before us.

But so much of life is a drain; like the whirlpool sucking down into the sinkhole, the breath of life can barely manage to survive the rigors and stresses of each day, and so the weakened goal is to just make it to the weekend, where one can rest, find a bit of respite, and get the batteries recharged in order to survive the grueling Monday and beyond.

That aptly describes the healthy individual.  But if you are less than healthy?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a health condition such that the health condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the weekend is the weakened goal to reach, and any pablum of phrases like “carpe diem” is merely an empty dash of meaningless nothingness.

Getting through each day with a medical condition is hard enough; making it to the weekend in one’s weakened state, is even harder.

Perhaps it is time to contact a FER Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and get the process started, so that one day in the not-so-distant future, your weakened state may be attended to and those latin phrases, like “carpe diem”, aren’t just artificial hoorays to get you to the next weekend.

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 Disability Retirement: The Mechanical Wind-Up Toy

Do they even make them, anymore?  Or, are all such toys and gadgets made with computer chips and batteries?

They were fascinating creations — from monkeys playing the drums to cars whizzing under the furniture; the only thing which stopped them was the end of the spring-action coils or whatever other means of internal arrangements were engaged.  As with all such gadgets, the cessation of activity came when the mechanical coil reached its end, the spring action came to a full release, or somehow the device reached its intended endpoint.

In the end, is it really any different from today’s gadgets — as when the battery loses its “juices” or the computer chip has burned itself out?

Human beings, as well, possess an endpoint to the internal mechanism of the body — of repetitive actions which break down the endurance of a joint; of injuries or diseases that attach organs and specific areas; of stresses which damage the mind.

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 his or her position with the Federal Agency or the Postal Unit, Federal Disability Retirement may be the answer to the unanswered question: Is there any recourse to my medical inability to perform all of the essential elements of my job?  Or, am I merely to be treated as a mechanical wind-up toy who has reached the end of my usefulness because of the unraveling of the internal coils that once allowed me to operate?

Contact a disability lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and see whether or not you can get beyond the limited warranty of a mechanical wind-up toy, and instead obtain a Federal Disability Retirement annuity and live beyond the life of the mechanism of springs and coils.

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 Disability Retirement under FERS: Name Dropping

We all know, or have heard of, Such people — people who “name drop” the names of other people, or make reference to others as a way of showing (A) by naming someone else, their own status is somehow elevated by mere association, (B) by making reference to someone else, it makes them look intelligent, sophisticated, important, etc., or (C) by dropping a name, some relevant implication is to be discerned.

In a Federal Disability Retirement case, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management consistently engages in choice C above.  They will state, in various forms: “You filed for Social Security disability benefits and, as of this writing, you were denied by Social Security.”

Yes, well…everyone who is filing for OPM Disability Retirement benefits is required by statutory law to file for SSDI and, since almost everyone filing for FERS Disability Retirement is still employed by the Federal government or the U.S. Postal Service, an automatic denial is almost guaranteed.  Thus, to be denied by Social Security should have no relevance.  However, by name dropping “Social Security”, OPM wants you to walk away with the following implication: You were denied by the Social Security Administration; therefore, you are not disabled.

Contact an Federal Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and consider the relevance of any name dropping in preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application with OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

FERS Medical Disability Benefits: King for a Day

There are times when you simply “feel” different; of having greater confidence; of sensing that you can accomplish things in life beyond the negative reality that circumstances have imposed; and that had you been born in the days of feudal lords and castle moats surrounding the dungeons of the human heart, you would have been knighted on this day of days where reckonings don’t matter and the callous universe around fails to dent the optimism abounding.

Is it all a surreal mirage?  Is being King for a Day enough for most of us, when reality checks the fantasies and daydreams with impervious ineptitude but with an efficiency far beyond what most of us require?

Contrast such a day to so many others: the daily grind of mortality’s unforgiving nature, where we feel less than the day’s wages will allow for. Medical conditions have a pernicious way of beating us down; and on those days when we feel that we are the King for a Day, it turns out that it was all a figment, a filament of unproven discourse echoing down chambers that we never knew.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition makes for continuation in one’s Federal or Postal job an incompatibility which cannot be sustained, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is an option to consider.  Chronic medical conditions sometimes allow for a moment’s respite, where you might feel that you are “King for a Day”; but that is not enough to sustain or justify the unendurable.

OPM Disability Retirement is a benefit which all Federal and Postal employees have a right to, so long as the medical condition impacts one’s ability and capacity to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, and it can be shown to last for a minimum of 12 months.

Consult with a lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, lest being King for Day is not enough to sustain the remainder of the days when you merely feel like the pawn isolated and abandoned within the Court of Human Misery.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement Benefits: Fooling ourselves

It takes extraordinary intelligence to play the fool, and an even greater cleverness to fool oneself; just read a few lines from Shakespeare’s King Lear, and the interaction between Lear and the Fool, and one realizes the extensive capacity of self-indulgence in the deception of man in his need to guard his own ego.

In fooling one’s self, does one fool others, as well?  If a person takes on a persona, lives in a fantasy world, creates an identity separate and apart, and yet becomes consumed by the double-life to the extent that he or she comes to believe one’s own creative imagination, does the fact that others who knew the person from childhood onward destroy the fool’s own universe of make-believe?

Of the old adage and Biblical admonition that prophets are never accepted in their own hometown — is this because those who know a person from early life, “know better”?

If we fool ourselves only within the contained universe of our own thoughts, and never let the fantasies “seep out” into the objective reality of other’s awareness, have we fooled ourselves?  Others?  Is living a “double-life” the same as fooling ourselves and others, or is it only when we fool those closest to us where the “double” makes a difference?

What about hiding a medical condition?  What if a person is on anti-depressants or other psychotropic medication regimens, and yet everyone else believes that person to be the envy of the world, of the very definition of “happiness” exponentially quantified, until one day that very person is committed to an intensive psychiatric hospital and it comes out that he or she is the most unhappiest of individuals — has that person fooled himself, others, or both?

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, a great deal of “fooling” must go on in the interim.  You may overcompensate; you may appear to others to be “just fine”; and the tailored seams of normalcy may continue on for some time, until the wear and tear of self-deception begins to take its toll.

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, is often the first honest step towards being “true to one’s self”, and like the fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear, it is the capacity of the King fooling himself, and not the honesty of the fool, that makes for the tragedy that ensues.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Fear of one’s shadow

What does that metaphor mean?  Perhaps to different people, different and varying things — of constantly being on edge despite nothing objectively to be anxious about; of fearing the worst around every bend and corner; of imagining impending doom despite the best of times; of never being able to enjoy that which has been attained or accomplished; and a multitude of similar circumstances that evoke an image of a person who remains in a perpetual flux of emotional turmoil.

Does this describe you?  Perhaps there is a reason — some Freudian abscess deep within the damaged psyche of an individual, unidentified and undetected, originating from a trauma experienced in childhood; or, he’s just a “nervous sort of fellow”.  Fear of one’s shadow is that person who expects the worst even within circumstances that highlight the best.  It is not just a lack of confidence, nor a pessimism that pervades against the reality of the illuminated world; rather, it is the expectation of disaster when reality fails to coincide with shadows that fail to appear even when all around you darkness dominates.

Perhaps we have done a disservice to this newest generation, and the one before, by always encouraging them with hope, never criticizing them, and allowing them to always think “positively” about themselves, their expectations and their future.  Then, when reality abuts against the expectation of anticipated success, this young generation falls apart and is inadequately prepared to handle failure.

Fear of one’s shadow is often the byproduct of an upbringing unprepared and unfortunately ill-prepared to become responsive to failures in life’s cycle of successes and failures.  It is, in many ways, a protective mechanism, where fear is the dominant factor in order to shield one from the reality of the world around.

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, the fear of one’s shadow may not be so unrealistic — especially as it concerns how the agency or the Postal Service will act, react, respond to or otherwise initiate sanctions, actions and administrative proposals if you fail to return to a previous level of productivity and attendance regularity.  For, in the end, the Federal Agency and the Postal Service are not in a protective role; rather, they are often the adversary that needs to be constantly reminded of “the laws” that protect and preserve human dignity and contractual responsibilities.

For Federal employees and Postal workers who need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, remember always that it is not one’s own shadow that needs to be feared, but rather, the looming figure behind your own shadow that may come unexpectedly to attack you, and that is why you need to consult with an experienced attorney in preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether you are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Lawyer Representation OPM Disability Retirement: The winter doldrums

Whether everyone without exception experiences it, one can never tell.  For some, it comes in a subtle, slow manner, approaching at the beginning of, somewhere in the middle, or near the end when the long days of cold and darkness seem to have pervaded for too long that it has extinguished any memories of summer days and the sound of lapping waves in the heat of August.

For others, it comes like the roaring rush of the Siberian winds, paralyzing one as the shivers and overwhelming sense of doom and gloom – those twin cousins of an anticipated darkness and a subjective response to such environmental causation – becomes unavoidable in their power and sensation.  Of course, those who live in Florida never experience it, or rarely so.

The winter doldrums come upon most, in varying states of power, with impact in spectrums that only the affected individual can concede to.  It is, of course, too early to complain about so nascent in the season.  Instead, we are to be “joyful”, as the holiday season is upon us; and yet…

The analogy and metaphor have been applied in literature great and mediocre; of seasons likened to life’s cycles, and of their parallels to the experiences engaged.  From the “winter of discontent” to the “summer of childhood memories”, the cycle of seasons play upon the imagination, as spring represents the innocent beginnings of youthful dreams and fall betrays the end of childhood.

But of winter?  Where does the metaphor begin, and more importantly, what is anticipated beyond the frozen pillars of shivering nights?  And of winter doldrums – do we all experience them, and to what metaphor will we attribute the sensation of blanketed despondency, never to be shed except in the light of hope for a future yet to be anticipated?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition has brought about the winter doldrums too early in one’s career, preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, may well be the only way to shed the blanket of winter doldrums.  For, if spring is the season of hope and summer the embracing of tomorrow, then fall must by necessity be the phase of the downtrodden, and the winter doldrums the time to begin preparing.

Such analogies, of course, are meant to be just that – images by which to begin a process that remains a stark reality – for, the bureaucracy of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is likened to a dark dungeon that must be faced, and the perilous journey of filing a Federal Disability Retirement is sometimes the only way out of the despair of the Winter doldrums, by preparing, formulating and filing an effective OPM Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement from Federal Service: By what right?

It is a question often posed in the dead of night by those who would undermine an assertion based upon an instinctive sense of fairness, but perhaps not able to be articulated in comprehensible form.  By what right do you enter these premises?  By what right do you express that opinion?  By what right do you think you can do that?

It is, as with many questions, one that has a sadly contextual background of a negative past – for, whenever a person, a populace or a segment of a greater society begins to assert a “right”, it was generally preceded by a breakdown of community and caring.  For example: A violation of another’s property where a fence has not yet been placed should be resolved by two neighbors discussing the infraction or infringement without resorting to a higher authority.  If that “neighborliness” cannot resolve the conflict, then a fence may be built and the right to build such a fence can be asserted by the fence-building-neighbor as a “right” of property ownership.  No one would, or could, dispute such a right to do so, but the mere fact that a fence had to be built is evidence of a preceding breakdown of the unspoken rules of a community, where resolution of a conflict could not be accomplished by discussing, caring, understanding and compromising for the sake of a community’s greater good, but instead results in a declarative reference to one’s “right” to do X, Y or Z.

Rights should have the insipid connotation of negativity to the extent that asserting them is something of a last resort and the last bastion of scoundrels and suspicious individuals seen in an unfavorable communal light; but in modernity, shouting out one’s “right” to do this or that, or standing on a soapbox and pontificating about how we (why does everyone assume that he or she has a “right” to speak on behalf of that undefined “we” in the first place?) have every “right” to be here, do this or that or be “in your face” because of the proverbial “catch-all” – the “Bill of Rights”.  By what right?

For Federal and Postal employees who are considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, it may well be that asserting one’s right to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits was preceded by a context of negativity – of the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal facility failing to, refusing to, or otherwise not showing effort for, accommodating one’s medical condition, illness or disability, and that is when the assertion of declaring one’s “right” to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits becomes the inviolable pathway to an exit out of an untenable workplace situation.

To that extent, preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is somewhat akin to building that “fence” between your property and the next-door neighbor’s, whose dog keeps coming into your yard, digging up the freshly-planted bushes and vegetables, pooping all over the place and attacking your cat, and cares not a twit to try and resolve the issue; that, in many ways, is the Federal agency or the Postal facility you work for.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Of things (which should be) hidden

Perhaps it is a moment of repose, when relaxation allows for an unflattering silhouette or an act with hands which reach for things not publicly accepted; or of an insight into the depths of a soul, better left concealed, congealing unexpectedly before one’s eyes despite best or better attempts to suppress or repress.

We all assume certain aspects of a person’s life, and when they appear not within the slice of images presented to the public eye, we do not take notice because the presumption remains throughout.  Thus do bathroom scenes remain irrelevant throughout most of the history of film, and have only made their debut as titillating artistry masked as prurient creativity encroaches in subtle increments upon our sensibilities (with the obvious exception, of course, of Hitchcock’s scene of the curtained shadow).

Somehow, despite our incessant clatter of protestations to the contrary, the privacy of our lives become exposed and elevated to a pedestal of a declarative rumination, like the child-actor who accepts the adoration of public applause in place of the denied love of a parent.  The lowest of our essence tends to congregate in bunches of time, place and people; perhaps, as like attracts like, and similarities of venturesome teleologies aggregate for symbiosis of common causes, so the ugliness of humanity seems always to find its way where innocence abounds and the naive output is counterbalanced by the depravity of so many soulless zombies.

So it is in the workplace, where the ugliness of human character tends to reveal itself.  But that we wish for privacy, and for the sheer meanness of the human spirit to remain hidden.  The skin is an organ which covers, and for that we may be thankful — as the inner organs of man were never meant to be exposed for viewing where beauty is replaced with the stark reality of who we are.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must continue to go to work despite the deteriorating and progressive presence of 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 positional duties, the persistent exposure to things which should remain hidden, often becomes a constancy of unrelenting corridors of shame.

Just as divorce merely widens the microscopic fissures of that which the child already sensed, and the secrets leading to wars were already well-known by enemies and allies alike, so the facade which allowed for amiability and camaraderie suddenly crumbles, and the ugliness of humanity exposes itself.  Why is it that of those things once hidden, they suddenly become public and unconstrained?  And in the very midst of medical conditions and human plight which should engender empathy and consolation, the increase in harassment and progressive punishment exponentially facilitates.

For the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who finds him or herself in such a situation, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management becomes not merely the least of options remaining, but the best alternative to a deteriorating circumstance.

And of those things which should have remained hidden?

Like vestiges of timeless reruns from an era veiled by innocence, the reels of fading images defy the reality of our day, and the best course of action is to prepare an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to OPM so that the escape hatch can invite a gust of fresh air where once the stuffiness of a stale and toxic environment was suffocating the very life out of our soulful existence.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Early Medical Retirement: Sleep Disorders

Sleep disorders; non-restorative sleep; Sleep Apnea; Sleep dysfunctions; altogether, they can cumulatively comprise distinguishable medical disorders, but often are lumped together, and can encapsulate differing and almost opposite conditions, including idiopathic hypersomnia, major hypersomnolence disorder, insomnia, narcolepsy, and similar medical disabilities.  Often, the effects and symptoms are the major issues, resulting in profound and intractable fatigue; inability to focus or concentrate; lack of mental acuity, etc.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from various sleep disorders and varying severity of such sleep dysfunctions, the impact can be severe and palpable.  Whether in a sedentary, cognitive-intensive position where mental acuity and focus, concentration and attention to detail are impacted; or in “safety-related” work where reliance upon full awareness, wakefulness and perceptual judgment of one’s surroundings are critical; sleep disorders can have a direct and negative impact upon the Federal or Postal worker’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of the positional requirements.

Such sleep dysfunctions and sleep disorders are viable medical conditions which form a foundational basis for a Federal Disability Retirement application, submitted through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

In past ages, people used to merely associate and dismiss daytime somnolence as mere “laziness” and lack of willpower; fortunately, we now know better, and such knowledge is reflective of a small but incremental advancement in human progression, which is always an amazing feat in this cesspool of ignorance we deem as civilization.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire 
OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer