Medical Retirement for Federal Workers: The Gatekeeper II

The image of the gatekeeper is a powerful one — for it represents both sides of an analogously identical coin:  of an insurmountable impasse from the perspective of a third party, as well as the key to entry and deliverance when seen from the subjective “I”.

Stress is ultimately an inevitable and inherent part of any workplace environment.

Each of us represents a gatekeeper of sorts; what we allow to bother us, and what stresses we embrace and transport into the quietude of our own homes, will often depend upon each individual’s tolerance for the wide spectrum of ability to filter the stresses impacting our lives.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management is also a gatekeeper of sorts.  The Agency empowered to make determinations on all Federal Disability Retirement applications can open the door to allowing for that crucial rehabilitative time in a person’s life, where granting of a Federal Disability Retirement application will secure one’s future and change the course of one’s life in order to avoid, avert and allow for an environment different from the stressful one which is impacting one’s health and well-being.

Ultimately, the gatekeeper him/herself — the Federal or Postal employee — must make the decision to open the door or not, and to take the next step in determining whether or not it is time to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether under FERS or CSRS.  That decision — whether to open the door or not — is often the single most important step of one’s life, career, and future course of actions.

In the end, we determine who we are, what we want in life, and when the right time is, in overcoming the insurmountable; for the gatekeeper has the hidden key to the passageway to the Khyber Pass of our own future.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal and Postal Disability Retirement: Pain, Anxiety & Exacerbation

Medical conditions tend to “feed upon” one another.  Maintaining a balanced perspective on anything is difficult when one is in pain, and the nagging, incessant presence of pain, diffuse and radiating, extending to areas and points of the body where one can no longer specify a particular area because of the widespread extension, makes it impossible to have the requisite focus and concentration necessary to perform one’s job.  Further, the profound fatigue which results from the daily fight against the pain, where one’s energy and reserve of patience for daily social and professional encounters is expended and exhausted such that one must choose between being civil or countering the pain, is something which many cannot understand.

At some point, consideration must be given to preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS or CSRS, from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.  Whether now, or a few weeks from a stated point, becomes an irrelevancy when one suffers from chronic pain, for the Federal or Postal employee who has endured such medical conditions already knows — whether the doctor concedes it or not — that one cannot continue in this manner.

The physical pain, of course, only serves to exacerbate and feed upon the anxiety — anxiety which projects future events, financial security (or insecurity), and whether and for how long one’s agency or the U.S. Postal Service will look the other way as performance deteriorates and the pervasive whispering campaign by coworkers and supervisors begins.  Pain of a chronic nature only invites anxiety; and when the two combine, they serve to exacerbate to an extent where an exponential result is attained, neither explained by the pain alone nor the presence of anxiety, but where the sum of the total exceeds any ability to maintain the balanced perspective needed to continue to perform the essential elements of one’s job.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire