Reflections of an OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer – Page 4

Attorney Representation Federal Disability Retirement: Struggles

Posted onDecember 1, 2017AuthorFederal Disability Retirement AttorneyLeave a comment

It is a law of life, is it not? To struggle; to always have to thrash about just to survive, whether in the world of employment, the world of self-control, the universe of just maintaining a semblance of sanity within a greater complex of madness we face each day? And, indeed, that is the basis of most philosophical systems that have been posited – from the Ancients who posited permanence as opposed to constant flux […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement Representation: The pecking order

Posted onNovember 30, 2017May 28, 2021AuthorFederal Disability Retirement AttorneyLeave a comment

Watching birds fly and cavort around a bird-feeder, one realizes that the term as applied to human conduct is not too far from the reality of the natural order of things. There is, indeed, a “pecking order” in the world of birds and fowls aflight; it has to do with size, aggression, quickness and desire to survive. In other words, how birds behave is not too far afield from the way in which humans interact. […] Read More …

CSRS & FERS Disability Retirement: Life’s silent opera

Posted onNovember 29, 2017AuthorFederal Disability Retirement AttorneyLeave a comment

Is not much of opera a booming voice, a lingering chord and the grand mayhem of combining movement with long, loud and hanging sounds emitted from men and women who are born with a talent rarely heard? So, can there be a silent opera? An opera where movement and gestures are seen, but when the performers open their mouths, only silence come out? […] Read More …

Disability Retirement from OPM: Somehow, All problems suspended

Posted onNovember 28, 2017May 25, 2022AuthorFederal Disability Retirement AttorneyLeave a comment

We all seek those moments, don’t we? A period of respite, that time of suspended ecstasy where all of life’s problems are suspended, if only for a temporary span in order to regain our equilibrium, retake the focus lost and remake the moments wasted. Isn’t that why people become obsessed with silly arguments on the Internet, in Facebook confrontations and twitter feeds, … ? […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: Best/Worst Case Scenario

Posted onNovember 27, 2017December 24, 2021AuthorFederal Disability Retirement AttorneyLeave a comment

It is a procedural approach, and those who engage in it often have the greater talents akin to science, engineering, mathematics and symbolic logic. It is the person who views every contingency in terms of best and worse case scenarios before deciding upon a determined course of action. But how accurate is the “best” and the “worst”? […] Read More …

OPM Disability Claims: The chasm between illness and time

Posted onNovember 25, 2017November 8, 2022AuthorFederal Disability Retirement AttorneyLeave a comment

Illness creates the need for time and forces time to stand still for treatment, recuperation, attending, and resting. Time is the commodity we no longer have in modernity, where the busy-ness of life’s travails just to survive forces everyone to walk about in a daze of exhaustion and thoughtless fatigue for fear of failure in this driven society. The chasm between illness and time is that blur of life […] Read More …

Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Closet of skeletons

Posted onNovember 23, 2017AuthorFederal Disability Retirement AttorneyLeave a comment

It is a metaphor that is familiar; of secrets, or near-secrets; of those cluttered past incidents and events that need to be kept in the hallway closet, perhaps even locked for safety and security, whether of embarrassment, regret or shame. Yet, modernity has less of them. With the disappearance of shame, of openness of societal mores and normative values disappearing, almost vanishing, […] Read More …

Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: Moments of clarity

Posted onNovember 22, 2017March 23, 2022AuthorFederal Disability Retirement AttorneyLeave a comment

There are those moments, aren’t there? It may come as a flash, in the middle of the night, while walking quietly in the woods (or in one’s back yard, pretending that it is in the middle of somewhere’s nowhere, despite the loud humming of lawn mowers and air blowers whoosh-whooshing in the distant yonder over the fence beyond); and it need not be because of some eureka moment or because of problems faced and meditated upon. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: Meaningful turns

Posted onNovember 21, 2017AuthorFederal Disability Retirement AttorneyLeave a comment

How many turns do we make on any given day? Not just actual ones, like those turns while driving a car, but figurative ones, as well. If a person approaches you and asks, “Did you make the right turn?” — what is the response? Is there a “right” answer? Is there a relationship in the English language between the terms “right”, “left” and the physical attributes we possess? […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability: The constant struggle

Posted onNovember 20, 2017January 31, 2022AuthorFederal Disability Retirement AttorneyLeave a comment

It does appear never-ending, doesn’t it? And what of that dream – of some windfall, or perhaps the lottery pick of numbers that somehow keeps people coming back to the corner Mart and purchasing tickets despite the astronomical chances that defy the odds of probability? Why is it that people are more apt to believe in conspiracy theories that the moon landing or aliens from Mars have been concocted and coopted by some nefarious government, […] Read More …