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

 

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

 

Disability Retirement for Federal Government Employees: The Line between Chaos and Order

It is a thin line.  Subject to the winds of perspectives, and often alternating between moods, stimuli encountered; adversarial confrontations may destroy the fragile order held together by sheer will power; and in the end, the appearance of calm and order is often a mere front, a determination to survive another day, when it is the boiling pot of underlying chaos which constitutes the reality of the person in need and crying out for help.

Whether it is to mask the pain of physical conditions by ingesting large quantities of prescribed medications in order to survive the day, while all the time concealing it (or simply not providing the full extent of information) for fear of being disqualified or being sent to a fitness-for-duty examination; or perhaps it is psychiatric in nature, and the fear of revelation and isolation from coworkers, supervisors, etc.  The line between order and chaos is indeed a fragile, almost imperceptibly thin one.

Some refrain from considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement precisely because, to do so would be a self-admission that the necessity of filing reflects the seriousness of that growing chaos.  But such chaos can only be contained for a period of a day, a month, perhaps several months, before it begins to manifest itself in ways that others will begin to take note.

Like the largest organ of the human body — our skin — which holds together the complexity of the human body with all of its organs, intestines and the gory details of our inner self, in order to make the human appearance presentable; likewise, the chaos within is contained by a slim margin.

Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is a benefit which allows for that recuperative time in order to settle the chaos; for the Federal and Postal worker who treads the tightrope of a progressive medical condition which is beginning to impact one’s ability to perform the essential elements of one’s job, it is an option which must be considered.  Otherwise, the thin line between chaos and order may be trampled upon, thereby exposing the true nature of one’s internal condition, thus revealing the reality of our lives.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire