Medical Disability Retirement under FERS: Where We Are

Ships moored at any dock must by necessity face three questions: Where they are; What their next destination is; Why they are there and why they are going to their next destination point.

Life in general is like that — that indefatigable question always on the tip of a child’s tongue: The “where” question, which also always contains the subtext of the “why” question.  Ever been on a car trip with a young child?  How much longer; where are we; why is…?  As adults, we become too engrossed in the busy-ness of our daily lives, and abandon the curiosity we once had.  Exhausted, often feeling defeated, we are too tired to even care about where we are, let alone how we got there.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from 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 job, the question of where we are may suddenly take on a prominence heretofore abandoned.  Where we are — in terms of one’s ability to continue in the chosen career; in terms of one’s medical condition and its impact upon one’s essential job duties.

Contact a retirement lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and consider the options available when prompted by the question, Where are we? — so that you can affirmatively know where we are.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: Sitting alone

Sitting alone can be dangerous.  Whether early in the morning or late at night, when one’s thoughts are the only neighbor within, and the soliloquy of voices have been shuttered into basement echoes where the drip-drip of a broken faucet reverberates amidst the endless thoughts of tumult and disaster.  The disconnect between reality and thought, betwixt action and mind, become exponentially exaggerated when sitting alone.

Rarely do tectonic shifts in the objective world result in major disasters where entire civilizations crumble and become destroyed; for, each and every day, subterranean movements occur imperceptibly without notice of bystanders who walk from cafe to office; but within the shifts which occur while sitting alone, the tumults of a mind fearful of one’s future become endless nightmares that cannot be contained.

The subtlety of fear unrecognized; the voice within that panders to irrationality; or of the dread that overwhelms — it can all come about through sitting alone.  The cacophony of voices around; the television blaring to drown out silence; friends and acquaintances invited in order to keep out the squeezing quietude of being alone: these are temporary ways of blunting the danger of sitting alone.

It is like having a medical condition and trying desperately to ignore it; at some point, we are all alone in the world, just as the womb that once protected within a catacomb of warmth and security became lost upon the expelling into the cold and heartless universe, and so we remain sitting alone with fear and loathing for a future yet undecided.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are sitting alone, unsure of what do to because a medical condition has begun to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, it is time to consult with an attorney and begin the process of initiating an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and to stop avoiding the prospect of sitting alone by becoming lost in the day-to-day struggle of endless points of procrastination.

For, sitting alone is the pathway to realizing the disasters that loom within one’s thinking; it is a consultation with an experienced OPM Disability Retirement attorney that will open upon the doors for a future yet untold.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Lawyer Representation for OPM Disability Retirement: Myopic view

One goes through life struggling just to get through each day.  Life is hard.  Yet, as parents we are scolded into feeling obligated to paint always the positive picture to our children:  That you can work hard and achieve anything; that dreams are there to be realized; that life is a bowl of fairytales waiting to be realized.

Then, of course, children take that viewpoint and filter it through selective and narrow life encounters: The recent Royal Wedding that purports to convey a fairytale-like romance blossomed into reality’s harsh discourse (so long as you don’t read the gossip-columns about the private lives of those involved); the Wall Street trader that makes her first billion; the internet start-up company that offers an initial IPO of a cool 5 billion; and the one who inadvertently wandered into a corner mart store, bought a lottery ticket with his last dollar and won a 50 million dollar jackpot.

We don’t delve into statistical improbabilities of such events actually happening to ourselves, let alone our kids; but there you have it — dreams are here to be realized, grasped, within the reach of a blink’s dream away.

Then, adulthood, reality and the daily grind sets in; the myopic view is the one that strives to earn a living for this day, next week, or even for the month; because, in the end, the “long” view — of planning ahead, thinking about the future or even about the day after the short term — are somehow out of one’s reach, leaving aside being too fuzzy to consider.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Workers who must contend with a medical condition that no longer allows for the Federal or Postal employee to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the myopic view of life is the familiar one:  Get through this day; try to limit the pain or mental anguish; try not to make any waves at work; try and remain anonymous, or less noticed than yesterday.

It is the shortsightedness of our lives and the manner in which we live, that becomes the salt upon the wound of our own making.

Preparing, formulating and filing 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, is at least thinking about tomorrow, or the day after.  For, the problem with the “short-term” is that it keeps dragging into the “long-term” of our lives, and preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application can at least turn the short-term of misery into the long-term of some semblance of future security, in order to attend to the priority of both the myopic view and the far-sightedness of our future: one’s health.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

CSRS & FERS Disability Retirement: Life’s silent opera

Is not much of opera a booming voice, a lingering chord and the grand mayhem of combining movement with long, loud and hanging sounds emitted from men and women who are born with a talent rarely heard?  So, can there be a silent opera?  An opera where movement and gestures are seen, but when the performers open their mouths, only silence come out?  If one-half of opera is the singing and the uniqueness of voices, while the other half is comprised of extravagant costumes and sets that tell the narration of the story through dramatic display, can life be bifurcated any more than an opera?

And, yet, isn’t that what much of life is – of a silent opera, where we notice, recognize and even sometimes acknowledge the movements of another person, but rarely listen or hear anything about that person?  How well do you know the person sitting next to you, or your next door neighbor whom you have seen for over a decade?

We ask not questions that might query and squeeze out narratives otherwise unknown and ignored, and so long as we attend life’s silent opera, we only glean half of the story, if that.  And to others, likewise, we are life’s silent opera.  They mind their own business, and we ours; and that is what we call “privacy” and the heart of individualism, as opposed to “collectivism” or, in more picturesque settings, of a “community” – something which we fool ourselves into believing exists, anyway, but spending countless hours of valuable time searching the Internet and engaging in make-believe that Facebook is a “community”.

Then, of course, life’s silent opera often includes a medical condition, or some pain or trauma experienced or currently undergoing, but of which no one else is aware.  The movements are still there, and even the extravagant settings.  Perhaps a person walks with a limp, or as he or she sits down, an involuntary grimace shadows the expression; yet, no complaint is made, no sound is emitted, and so we are satisfied with half of the storyline.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal worker’s job, life’s silent opera begins.

It is time to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, because – while no one acknowledges the “voices” and “sounds” of the medical condition, the “movements” are there, of the Agency beginning to realize less-than-acceptable performance; of using too much SL or extending one’s FMLA and remaining on LWOP; and while no one may say anything, the rumblings of Agency harassment and impending termination may be just around the corner.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement is the next logical step in this extravagant setting of life’s silent opera, where even the main actors are no longer interested in whether the audience hears your voice or not.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Disability: The constant fight against the negative

There are different ages in different times, designated by the dominance of one entity over another. Thus do we refer to the “Age of Dinosaurs”, or the “Ice Age”; the Age of Feudal Lords; the Age of Man, of course, is a general aegis under which everything falls, once the four-peddling quadrant of living beings became dominated by the bi-pedaling progenitor of carnivorous over-consumption that prevails from time immemorial to the present “age”.

Modernity had now become the “age of therapy”, where somehow psychiatry and therapeutic intervention has come to dominate the basic necessities of life.  Perhaps that is appropriate, as the daily stresses that govern the requirements of survival have mandated a vicious cycle of inestimable pain, both in terms of physical deterioration and cognitive dissonance, by placing an intolerable level of stresses upon daily living.

It is this constant fight against the negative that we are told, holds the key to a “happier” life.  Can change in perspective, of outlook and viewpoint, simply by inserting “positive” language games into the daily soliloquy of internal voices make such a difference?  If language were non-existent, and we became a species of grunts and grumbling noises (which, if you pause and listen around you, comprises much of what passes off as “conversation”, anyway), would we be anymore “positive” than what we are today?

What if the human vocabulary were to be reduced to only positive declaratives and adjectives that only revealed “good” things – would such expunging of negative concepts result in the net effect of everyone “feeling good”?  Or, does “feeling” precede language, such that one can be negative in one’s essence before expression of that negativity, such that thoughts are merely the natural consequence of a state of negativity, anyway?

Medical conditions tend to make liars of us all; for, we can go through life imagining that we are somehow the “exception”, and those “others” who are beset with medical conditions did something “wrong” to have been hit with a medical condition – until it happens to us, as well.  Suddenly, with the reality of pain, suffering, and the general human condition of illness, sickness and debilitating injury, we realize our mortality, our susceptibility to a viral plague, and our fragile existence.  How others view us also changes.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the constant fight against the negative become a daily struggle that often takes its toll, preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, may become a necessary next step in such a daily struggle.

The constant fight against the negative, itself, will have its impact, and it may be that the combination of the medical condition, the adversity shown by the Federal agency or Postal facility, and the negative internal thoughts that insidiously devalue and destroy, will come to a coalescence of intolerable stress.  When that happens, it is time to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, as another step in the constant fight against the negative.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: If not X, then at least Y

Many such contingent annotations are in the form of:  If not illegal, then at least unethical; or, if not unethical, then at least lacking of propriety, etc.  It is the pathway to a lesser acceptance, where the focus of one’s aspiration is lowered because of the inevitability of discovering that evidence insufficient will be uncovered.  Thus can one go on ad infinitum in various but similar forms:  If not happiness, then at least some semblance of contentment; if not a soul mate, then at least someone to share my experiences with, etc.

But what if that “replacement” standard turns out to be less than acceptable over time, through duration of toleration, and during cold nights when boredom no longer excites in playing pinochle while the kids are asleep?  Or, if the infractions and constant infringements persist with no end in sight, and no appropriate definition of a violation such that there are penalties to be ascribed and consequences to be felt?  Do we then accept an even lesser paradigm, and if so, how do we know that such diminution and diminishment of acceptance won’t again be averted and avoided?  Thus, do we assert:  If not X, then at least Y; but if Y doesn’t work out, then at least Z; and so on?  When first one submits to the acceptance of a lesser standard, the proverbial horserace has already been lost.

In negotiations, in contractual disputes, in attempting to come to terms, etc., the sign first evidenced of conceding the lesser standard is the first indicator that the slippery-slope has just begun.   There are instances, of course, where the opposite is true, as well, except that we can rarely discern beneath the surface appearances.  That is what Federal and Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition impacts the Federal or Postal employee’s ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of the Federal or Postal employee’s positional duties, must face and accept daily – the conflict between an aspirational paradigm of hope, and the reality of daily pain and anguish.

Thus, for the Federal or Postal employee, we have:  If there is lesser pain today, perhaps I can last through the day; If I show that I am productive this week, then maybe the supervisor will just leave me alone, etc.  As if, “lasting through the day”, or just “being left alone” for a week, a day, an hour, etc., are acceptable standards for living life?  That is why abandonment of all prior paradigms must often be employed in the journey of life, career and fortitude of endurance; we tend to cling on to categories of an “ought” no longer applicable.

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who can no longer endure the acceptance of the lesser standard when there is an alternative to the constant suffering and persistent harassment at the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service, fortunately, there is the ongoing benefit of a Federal Disability Retirement annuity.  Even for that, the road is still difficult and arduous, for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the agency that determines all disability retirement applications, does not merely “hand out” the benefit.  Like everything else in life, it must be fought for.

But, then, the Federal or Postal worker who fights for a Federal Disability Retirement benefit can retrospectively declare:  “If not the constant and daily struggle, then at least an annuity to secure my future” – the “exception” to the rule, where the lesser is in fact the greater, but is not always apparently so.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Necessary steps to take in an unserious age

Adding the prefix implies that, beyond altering the root word, its conceptual opposite existed in a time prior to modernity and the present discourse of silliness.  The addition denotes a moment of opposition, where lack of substance occurred and the negation of irrelevance prevailed; and now we are left with a word which connotes a denial of that for which we yearn.

Every age has its follies; some epochs of upheavals are mere potholes in the history of revolutions and uneventful hiccups barely mentioned in those thick books which purportedly analyze decades, centuries and civilizations risen and fallen; and we must always look askance at grand designs and declarations which claim to have captured the essence of any given era.  But there is little doubt, and any shadows casting beyond the twilight of our own laughter and self-deprecating humor will only confirm the boundless limitations of such a statement of self-denial:  this is an unserious age.  There.  It has been stated.

Unequivocally, and with aplomb of non-judgmental claim to authority; how one would attempt to deny the truth of the matter, when the majority of the population spends eternal and endless time staring vacuously at a flat screen of fluorescent lighting, viewing, reviewing and re-reviewing videos of virtual reality unconnected to the objective world surrounding; where the reality of daily living has been subsumed by the politics of cult following and personalities designed more for advertising than for leadership; and so it goes.

There are, however, realities in such silliness that must still be faced, whether voluntarily or through force of encounter unavoidably demanded by the collision of life itself.  Medical conditions tend to do that to us — they demand our attention, and refuse to compromise our efforts at avoidance.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who find that a medical condition impacts his or her ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of the Federal position or U.S. Postal job, the next steps necessary in order to prepare an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, must be taken with a deliberative purpose in order to attain that level of plateau in life, where attending to the medical condition itself becomes prioritized.

In an unserious age, it is easy to get distracted and sidetracked, when the world around doesn’t take as weighty the cries for help or the means to achieve.  In a world of relative worth, where everyone has been arguing for decades that everything is “equal” and that “fairness” is defined by everyone looking, being and acting the same as everyone else, it is difficult to shake out of the deep stupor that society has wrought; but when the reality of circumstances hits us, as a medical condition surely does and will, it is time to shed one’s self from the prefix of “un”, and seriously consider the proper and effective preparation of a Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, forthwith and with efficient pinpointing of accuracy.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Epochal Dawns

There are those momentous events in life which we mark and memorialize; and, in the end, whether the cumulative bag of goodies amounts to a positive aggregate, or a negation of sorrows, we determine in the quietude of private thoughts.  Avoidance of future uncertainty is a talent wrought only by humans; for animals of other species, they cannot afford such luxuries, as survival in the here and now constitutes reality of future causality.

For us, there is today; tomorrow will take care of itself within the constructs of fear, angst and uncertainty; and as Heidegger would have it, the projects we savor are the ones which delay thoughts of tomorrow, death, and the certainty of extinction.

What are those epochal dawns?  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Workers, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, it can include the advent of a medical condition.  In the beginning, in retrospect, perhaps it was of minor consequence; left as merely an afterthought, a nagging pain, or perhaps a singular moment of sudden urgency.  But the chronicity of life often parallels the longevity of a condition, and what was once a mere quibble may have turned into that momentous event.

Medical conditions belong in the bag of goodies set aside as “negatives”; and it may well lead to the necessity of considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Avoidance of the issue will not switch the bag of goodies from the negative to the positive; but once that decision is made to file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, it is up to each Federal and Postal employee to determine whether the future course of events — that “hereafter” and “post-disability retirement life” — will mean that there is yet a future of positives, and not merely a reverberation of past negatives.

And what of that “epochal dawn”?  It remains so only if the event itself stays in a motionless rut of stagnation, like those old films of a dying carcass stuck in the mud of a scorching desert sky, where the vultures of a future abyss fly above, waiting for their pick of tenderloin.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement from Federal Employment: Far-Flung Universes

Each generation tells a generic story reflective of the times; and thus did the Great Depression era produce movies and epics with undertones of escapism from the harsh realities of life; of the 60s, the fear of nuclear holocaust and the confrontation of the Cold War; of the following decade revealing the hesitation for  technology and its pervasive intrusion into the privacy of our lives; and so on, so the anxiety, fear and loathing goes.

Throughout, people escape in their own private ways, through daydreaming, imaginative time-travels as in the classic short story by James Thurber depicted in, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”; and other times in nightmares and dreams controlled only through the breaches in our subconscious.  It often seems as if the far-flung dimensions and dominions of hope save us only through living in those other-world universes, if only for a moment, a period, a time and a day.

Vacations and weekends only delay the inevitable, and then the harshness of who we are, what we have become, and where we are going, all come crashing back, like the rolling waves of thunderous whitecaps which bellow in the echoing chambers of the far recesses of our minds.

For the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to threaten one’s livelihood, resulting in the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service beginning subtle (or not so) noises of increasing pressures through adverse actions, like unpleasant abdominal groans which should remain private but echo out into the public domain, it may be time to escape the escapism of the alternate universe and become “real” by considering 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.

Other and far-flung universes offer hope beyond dreams, but when the dream is shattered by the progressively deteriorating forces of a present-day reality, it is time to travel back to the origins of reality, and face a full-frontal confrontation of what the pragmatic steps of day-to-day concerns must by necessity bring, and begin to prepare, formulate and file for OPM Disability Retirement benefits.

Alternate dimensions indeed reflect the times one lives in, and may even represent a pleasant moment in time, a respite away from the harshness of today’s reality; but when the awakening occurs, one must shake away the cobwebs of fantasy, and face the serious concerns of one’s angst-filled day, as the medical condition will not go away, the Federal agency and the U.S. Postal Service will not fade, and the fight to survive will remain as real today as it will be tomorrow.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement Benefits: The Day After

Long term healing for Federal and Postal employees with Federal Disability Retirement

Days after Holidays and vacations often magnify the troubles existent prior to; for, delay merely kicks the proverbial can down the unknown pathway of self-delusion, but in the objective world which surrounds us, our subjective attempts to manipulate reality through diversionary tactics of procrastination, merely results in the cumulative compounding of problems unresolved.  Medical conditions tend to do that.

Ignoring them fails to cure; self-medicating it without a proper diagnosis can further complicate the underlying condition and their manifested symptoms; and merely putting on a brave front rarely resolves the issue.  For Federal and Postal employees who find that they suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker from performing all of the essential elements of their positional duties, Federal Disability Retirement is an option to consider — not for purposes of resolving the medical issue itself, but for the underlying problem of time and attendance.

Medical conditions need time to heal; they require more than mere 3-days alliances of coinciding weekends and vacations.  Instead, Federal Disability Retirement allows for the Federal and Postal worker to take stock of one’s needs, attend to them, then move on in another vocation for the brighter future of a promising tomorrow. Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit offered through one’s employment with the Federal government, and is filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

As the day after often encompasses the problems of today, compounded by the unresolved issues of yore, so attending systematically to the proverbial elephant in the room will begin to resolve the incremental magnification of that which was conveniently ignored and bypassed during those sleepless nights of unwanted worry.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire