opm disability benefits

Medical Retirement from Civil Service: Chaotic interludes

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The root word itself stands for the state of being prior to the ordering of the universe – either by the hand of God or through natural evolution; or, if you are a Get Smart fan, it is spelled somewhat differently – KAOS – and is actually not an acronym that stands for anything, but is an international organization set to do evil that only Maxwell Smart, Agent 86 and his partner Agent 99 can prevent from accomplishing their terrible deeds; […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: Keeping it together

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Living in modernity is a complex juggling act that never ends.  Simplicity recollected in former times often harken towards an idealization that perhaps never existed, where toil, labor and survival were a coalescence of a person’s life, and meaning was never divorced from what one was engaged in, the acts of striving, the struggle to earn a living.  Modernity magnifies Marx’s observation that human discontent is a result of separating man’s labor from the self-esteem of accomplishment, where the factory worker sees merely a microcosm of monotony […] Read More …

Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Childhood wishes

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We had them; some of us still remember and harbor them like sacrosanct relics of priceless value; and still others know of them and recollect some general idea long forgotten, once delighted in, but now rotting in the vestiges of abandoned buildings hollow but for the frame that haunts in the midnight moon.  Wishes remain throughout one’s life, whether in the stage of adulthood or old age; but it is the childhood wishes one remembers that reveal the empty soul of what one has become, […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement Law: The voice of constructive criticism

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It is rare for the individual to accept constructive criticism; rarer still, to invite and welcome it in any form, whether destructive, constructive or otherwise characterized as “positive”, “negative” or “neutral”.  The fact is that few of us accept any form of it at all, and quickly respond with the rebuttal:  “It’s not constructive”.  But why does it need to be? […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement: The silence erupting in the room

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You go out for a moment – perhaps to smoke a cigarette (do people actually do that these days?), to “freshen up” (is that necessarily a sexist presumption, in that women are the only ones who need to do so, or wasn’t it more likely just a euphemism to avoid the crass declaration that one has to “go to the potty”?) or just to get away from the din of dinner conversation; and, upon reentering the room those eyes look askance, askew, and away from you. What happened? […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: The Reconsideration Stage

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Much time is often wasted upon rebutting incoherent arguments. Such a statement is true in a great many sectors of life, as well as with an initial denial received from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. The first reaction in response to an Initial Denial received from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is to panic and become disheartened: The Federal Disability Retirement applicant has waited many, many months, just to get to this point of being denied an application which was thought to clearly meet the legal standard of preponderance of the evidence, and perhaps the medical narratives and treatment records clearly and unequivocally established the nexus between one’s medical condition and the essential elements of one’s job. […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement Law: The Steps to Take

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Life is often overwhelming enough. Then, when a medical condition make its initial entrance, remains for more than a fortnight and begins to impede, curtail and prevent one from doing the things one has taken for granted – the problem becomes more than just a nuisance, but a magnification and exponential exaggeration beyond that which was a burden to begin with: another problem adding to a host of problems. In life, we often know what needs to be done, and sometimes even the “how” in going about solving problems. But the capacity to prioritize and organize, to sort a jumble into a linear coherency, and to gather the necessary components into a cogent whole, is often the problem that prevents one from moving forward. […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Leaving that legacy behind

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We hear about it from ‘high-end achievers’; and every President now builds large temples to themselves, like some Greek gods with immortal canopies and call them “libraries” for the common minion to think that it is like those warm and fuzzy buildings we once visited in order to escape the ravages of our sordid childhoods. Perhaps it is the realization of that which has come back to haunt us: Darwinism, pure materialism, and the abandonment of faith in hobbits, gnomes and angels from beyond, that leaves us with the stark nakedness of our own mortality, and the need to fulfill that vacancy by building lasting memorials that only crumble with the decadence of time. […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: Counting coup

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It is not always in the outward and very-public display of emotions, in which a battle is fought and won; often, it is the restraining of a capacity and potential to reflexively counter, but held back just at the point of harm, that determines the pinnacle of gaining prestige. Acts of bravery for a Plains Indian did not necessarily require harm inflicted upon an enemy; counting coup and the subsequent rise in respect and prestige could involve the mere touching of an enemy, while escaping unharmed despite that close encounter with the savage face of danger. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: Tantum ergo

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It is the incipit of the last two verses of a Medieval Latin hymn written by St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas is best known for his inclusive osmosis by fiat of stretched logic to accommodate and force commensurability the texts of the ancients (i.e., Aristotle) within the essential boundaries of Christian theology. His methodology in accomplishing this feat was to posit the weakest of straw man arguments, then to systematically appear to knock them down, and then to declare a forceful conclusion as if the ergo naturally and rationally followed. That the conclusion is followed by verses subsequent, reflects how life works as well. […] Read More …