My name is Stephen Gobel. I am different from most authors who have previously written books about chronic pain. For most of my professional life, I have been a basic scientist who has conducted research into pain mechanisms and therefore I come at the problem of chronic pain from a basic scientist’s perspective. My education started as an undergraduate at City College of New York where my favorite course was neuroanatomy. That nerve cells can line up in long chains to convey information to our brains about the world we live in where it can be appreciated and acted upon continues to fascinate me to this day. Following graduation from New York University College of Dentistry, I received training in neuroscience on a United States Public Health Service Postdoctoral Fellowship. Then as a Staff Scientist and later as a Section Chief at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), I conducted basic science studies of pain pathways in the spinal cord and brain. I also have held administrative positions at the NIH that reviewed grant applications from pain scientists dealing with pain research and then with the Commonwealth of Kentucky where I administered a program dealing with spinal cord injury and head injury research.
In addition, I have dealt with several of my own episodes of chronic back, hip and knee pain as well those involving family members and friends. Some of these episodes have involved treatment by professional physical therapists along with many different self-designed trial-and-error approaches. I have written The Book because I am confident that the lessons learned from these experiences can be broadly applied to chronic pain in many different parts of the body and therefore can be of help to many people who are currently suffering with chronic pain.
Following publication of The Book in February 2022, I was selected Author Of The Week (March 7-14, 2022) by the Nonfiction Authors Association.
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