FERS Disability: disability retirement for federal employees

Federal Disability Retirement: And then we are gone…

August 3, 2017

The trailing ellipsis establishes a pause for reflection, and the finality of three periods for an emphasis upon the irreversible nature of the statement. “And then” connotes that something preceded – a lifetime of activities, a century or less of human historicity involving birth, growth, work, struggles, etc. – existed before the conclusion of the life. The “we are” slice of the sentence implies two additional variables: the universality of involvement – an event that excludes no one […]

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: The elixir of life

June 17, 2017

Is the substance we expunge necessarily the opposite of the positive? Does the mere fact of expiation denote that which is unwanted, or merely no longer of utility? In ancient times, an elixir was considered to be a substance of great desirability; it possessed multiple meanings, including a reference to that substance which was used in alchemy to alter base-metals into the gleaming riches of the natural order found deep beneath the chasms of the earth – gold. […]

Disability Retirement from Federal Employment: Mansions with many rooms

May 8, 2017

There is room enough, and the imagery posed by the concept presents the warmth of an open invitation, whether the guest is willing, able or otherwise unprepared for such unconditional hospitality. Mansions often pose a stoic, cold and unwelcoming façade, and it is always the people who inhabit them and the guests who frequent such expansive and impersonal grounds that make the difference between icy relationships of uncaring attitudes steeped in jealousies engendered and encouraged by competition, envy and mistrust, or the comfort of caring families. […]

OPM Disability Retirement: Living versus being alive

April 28, 2017

There is a difference, is there not? Of hummingbirds and cardinals bright against the backdrop of an evergreen; of a child running across the grassy knoll; then of aged men in nursing homes, shuttered away in corners where the drool of saliva unwiped reveals the tarnish of human unkindness; and of prisons rotting away with crowded cells for addicts whose sickness is considered a crime where, […]

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: The clinical language

April 19, 2017

The antiseptic nature of language allows for the euphemism of linguistic cloaking to occur. The corollary effect, however, is that it fails to provide a nexus to the humanity lost, and allows for an arrogance of language by imparting its distance and separation from warmth. Clinical language has that characteristic, steeped in the mysterious and archaic history of Gregorian chants at altars once embodying the Eucharist’s theological secrets of transubstantiation with the priesthood undulating in phrases foreign to ears of modernity; […]

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: False Promises

March 15, 2017

Is it an oxymoron? If it is made, how can it be negated by untruth; for, if it is a nothingness at the outset which compels null and void the substantive content of the thing itself, how can it purport to be what it is while at the same time creating an abyss of meaninglessness? A promise cannot be false if it is to have the very meaning of a promise; and yet, we know that there exists such falsity of posited assurances, if not proposed by dishonest individuals and con-men, then at least by unintentional or otherwise mistaken pillars of vain malfeasance. […]

Federal Disability Retirement Law: Recognizing Problems

March 13, 2017

Why are some better at preemptively addressing recognizable foreshadowing? Is it a genetic predisposition related to the capacity of surviving? Like the instinctive responses of animals, is it an inherent trait that favors those who are more “fit” with such a characteristic, and thus to the disadvantage of those who do not possess it, where recognition and preemptive engagement allows for survival and thus the genetic pool favoring by dominance of avoiding the mortality trap? […]

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: Illness

March 6, 2017

It is the pause button rendered by the universe, often without warning, without invitation and unwelcomed by all. Is it the gods laughing in the heavenly seclusion, as wanton children playing with the mortality of souls unrequited, as matches in the hands of mischievous hearts undisciplined by law, life or empathy? Then comes the triteness of wisdom, yet true but too late: “Oh, what a blessing health is”; “Is there a lesson to be learned?”; “Why me?”. Is this the crisis of life that is merely an obstacle to overcome, or the long road towards a progressive decline where mortality is not just tested, but revealed as the weak link in the proverbial chain of man-to-gods-to the theology of our own creation? […]

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Wisdom’s hold on life

February 21, 2017

We never quite “get it”. Trans-generational imputing of wisdom is not part of modern society. In more “traditional” societies, multi-generational families live together out of practical reasons: Not only is it less expensive if the earnings are pooled into a single resource of means, but until marriage or an offer of economic leverage pulls a member away from the core, imparting of wisdom, experience and voices of learned care may be passed down from generation to generation. In the West, instead, the rush is to depart and fracture; to get away as quickly as possible; for, as youth is the cult of modernity, so folly of youth is the means by which we live. […]

Federal Employee Medical Retirement: Deprogramming a Preconditioned Approach

August 27, 2016

The preconditioned attitude of the general public is that, if X has a medical condition, then such medical condition, by the very nature of the condition itself, will either entitle one to benefits, or not. Such an approach is what one is conditioned to expect — that by the very nature of the medical condition itself, means that it will either lead to, or not lead to, a specified result. This viewpoint and approach is based upon a definitional standard, where the very essence of what it means to suffer from X already predetermines whether one is eligible and entitled to benefit Y. […]