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Osher Gunsberg wants more people talking about chronic pain, which will affect an average of one in five Australians. Drawing on his experiences following a hip replacement in 2020, the former Bachelor Australia host presents Osher Gunsberg: A World of Pain. As with 2021’s A Matter of Life and Death, about suicide prevention, his approach is personal and immersive.
“I’m a 50-year-old guy who had a common surgery, but there was a complication,” says Gunsberg. “It took a long time to get a diagnosis. At one point, I said to a pain specialist, ‘I just want to you to inject ketamine into the nerve ending and chop my leg off’. It was agonising.”
Osher Gunsberg documents his battle with chronic pain, and various relief options, in the documentary A World of Pain.
Secondary surgery helped, but Gunsberg, who is 14 years sober and therefore has an aversion to opioid-based medication, found relief with a pain psychologist.
“I learned about amplification and sensitisation,” he says. “What I didn’t realise is that some of the pain signals I was experiencing are benign sensations – my wife just touching my leg with hers, rolling over in bed. But my brain was interpreting that as catastrophic pain signals and it was causing me to flinch away.”
To better understand the brain’s response to pain, he takes an ice bath in the documentary, watches a burlesque pain artist and tries Ngangkari cultural healing. He learns about phantom limb pain from Paralympic swimmer Monique Murphy and about long-term pain management from basketball great Luc Longley. Gunsberg also explores innovations in medicine, bookending the documentary with 27-year-old endometriosis patient Alana Crofts, who undergoes spinal surgery.
Osher Gunsberg (right) with former Australian basketball champion Luc Longley in A World of Pain.
“I’m so grateful we get the chance to talk about this stuff,” says Gunsberg. “It gave me so much empathy and understanding. I knew endometriosis was terrible, but I didn’t know enough about the details before I made this film.”
He believes more men should join the conversation around women’s reproductive health.
“I will never know what endometriosis feels like,” he says. “I will never know what childbirth feels like. I’ve seen my wife go through it without drugs, and you’ve got to talk about that because fear of that pain can impact the way a lot of people approach childbirth. I’m lucky to be in the era when it is acceptable for the man to be present at childbirth.