Federal Employee Disability Retirement: An Expectation of Disaster

Most lives are lived with an expectation of unease; if things are going smoothly, we look with suspicion at what will come from around the corner; if calm and quietude prevails, we consider it merely a precursor to a major storm; and if good fortune comes our way, there is a leeriness as to the strings attached.

Perhaps distrust is based upon justifiable historical events; or, as news is merely the compilation of tragic events gathered into a compendium of daily interests, so our skewed perspective of the world merely reinforces what our childhoods entertained.  With a foundation of such natural tendencies to see the world with suspicion, when a medical condition impacts a person, the expectation of crisis is only exponentially magnified.

Suddenly, everyone becomes the enemy, and not just the few who are known to lack heart; and actions which were previously normative, becomes a basis for paranoia.  Chronic pain diminishes tolerance for human folly; depression merely enhances the despair when others engage in actions betraying empathy; and the disaster which was suspected to be just around the corner, closes in on us when pain medications fail to palliatively alleviate.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to prevent one from performing all of the essential elements of one’s job, the bifurcation between the personal and the professional, between play and work, often comes crumbling down upon us, and signs of potential trouble portend to indicate to us that it may be time to “move on”.  That impending sense of doom?  It may be upon us.  That calm before the storm?  The reality of what the agency is contemplating may prove you right. And the potential loss of good fortune?

Agencies are not known for their patience.  For the Federal or Postal employee who is no longer one of the “good old boys” of the network of productive employees because of a medical condition which is beginning to impact one’s ability to maintain a daily work schedule, or perform at the level prior to the onset of a medical condition, consideration should be given to preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether one is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Time is often of the essence, and while most expectations of impending disasters are unfounded, the behavior of Federal agencies and the U.S. Postal Service can never be relied upon, any more than the weather can be predicted a day in advance.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Workers: Wotan’s Spear

It is the spear engraved with runic laws, captured in Wagner’s opera cycle, and Norse legend has it that it never misses its mark regardless of the ability of the wielder.

In health, that is how many feel, and come to believe.  In ill-health, or declining and deteriorating health, one’s mortality, susceptibility, and vulnerability come into question; and all of those walls of invincibility begin to crumble.  Suddenly, Wotan’s spear is held with wobbly hands; the grip is unsure, and the mark is unclear.  Present circumstances become a muddle of uncertainty, with past accolades unaccounted for or of little to no significance; and the future is not the bright star guiding one’s course of current actions.

Lebenswelt constitutes the totality of subjective-to-world experiences in phenomenology; when a medical condition engulfs one, the sensitivities to all of life’s experiences comes to the fore, such that the desire for life’s fulfillment and all that it offers becomes exponentially magnified in relevance, importance, and significance. For the Federal and Postal employee who begins to suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact one’s ability to perform the essential elements of one’s job, the capacity to survive economically, financially, and physically, as well as maintaining a semblance of cognitive and mental normalcy, takes on a fresh urgency.

Filing for Federal & Postal Disability benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS, is a pragmatic step which must be taken in order to attain a level of security and peace, and to attend to one’s health.  Health is the hallmark of who we are and how we are destined to live.  While filing for a benefit may seem like a mundane event when turmoil abounds, for the Federal and Postal employee who must continue to contend with the daily toils of life, the ability to throw Wotan’s spear and accurately hit the bullseye is still a needed goal despite one’s loss of stature in the Federal sector.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal and Postal Disability Retirement: Waiting for the Perfect Storm

Calamities can be admired, if from a distance; and the labeling of a natural event as the “perfect storm” reveals a conceptual sense of awe for that which is at once destructive, but simultaneously of sufficient power as to demand respect. It has come to mean the coalescence of elements and circumstances which, each in their individually separate characteristic, may result in a force of some sufficiency, but in the collective combination, enhances an exponential magnitude well beyond the capability of potency generally imagined.

Such occurrences are rare, and the statistical chances of attaining such perfection of disparate elements to be coordinated in time, space and defying potential variances, results in the rare aberration of such events. To wait upon such an historical event is to defy the odds; to expect to witness one in one’s lifetime is to disregard the astronomical statistical anomalies.

Such rarity of events, however, are just as often ignored in other arenas of life, though perhaps of lesser impact upon the world at large, including personal calamities involving the introduction of a medical condition which impacts one’s life. Federal and Postal Workers who are beset with a medical condition such that the injury, disability or progressively deteriorating condition may prevent one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties for the Federal government or the U.S. Postal Service, will often engage in procrastination in filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, by waiting upon the coalescence of all elements to a point of perfection — of waiting, in essence, upon the occurrence of the perfect storm.

Such delay is merely an excuse to fail to act, precisely because the coordinated combination will almost always have some elements missing. In responding to a crisis, there is rarely a right time; instead, the very definition of a crisis involves the rarity of the event, guided by the timeliness of an action in order to avoid the beauty and destructive force of that perfect storm.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Postal and Federal Disability Retirement: A Sudden Awareness

One often muddles through life, so long as nothing extraordinary occurs.

A medical condition may begin to impact the Federal or Postal employee, perhaps in a peripheral, non-threatening manner, at first; then, over time, a series of events occurs; perhaps, like the domino effect we witness in a causal calamity of sequential occurrences, to wit:  the medical condition; a second condition, this time requiring a new medication regimen; side effects; further manifestations of symptoms; a new diagnosis; missing more work than usual; sidelong glances from supervisors and coworkers; and before one realizes the full import of what has happened, one suddenly becomes aware that no longer is one considered that “star employee” by the agency, but a malingerer, a problem-child, and one who is teated in a fashion as in the old remnants of leper colonies.

When such a time erupts, and at a moment of such awareness, it is time to consider preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS.

While not offering the perfect solution, it does allow for the Federal or Postal employee suffering from a medical condition, a way out of an otherwise untenable position:  a time for recuperation; a level of financial security; a potential for engaging a second vocation and earning additional money above and beyond the disability annuity.  That sudden awareness is an indicator; in a similar manner to the revelation of symptoms, which is a signal of the body trying to warn a person of an impending medical crisis, so the awareness that one’s peers, coworkers and supervisors are viewing you in a different light is a triggering mechanism which should be heeded.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire