‘Chop my leg off’: Osher Gunsberg documents his dramatic battle with chronic pain

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.

“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.

“I wonder if we have the health policies we have around women’s health and maternity leave because the men in power have no idea because they were never there.”

Growing up with both parents as doctors – his father a rheumatologist at the Royal Brisbane Hospital, and his Lithuanian-born mother is an anaesthetist turned GP – Gunsberg and his three brothers were used to medical talk around the dinner table. Their maternal grandfather, also a doctor, talked of a placebo he supplied to patients with remarkable results.

“Mum would always say there is magic in medicine,” says Gunsberg. “You have to believe that you can get better; that you can change to a better way of being. You have to have hope.”

Since Network Ten axed The Bachelor in May, after 11 seasons, Gunsberg is exploring multiple genres. He continues to produce his podcast, Better Than Yesterday, and is drafting a second book about mental health.

“This business is interesting in that it’s either a fast yes or a slow no, and the yeses were starting to slow down,” he says. “[My wife] Audrey is so supportive. She looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Even if we have to sell the house, we’re together. We’re OK’. To be given that freedom is enormous.”

Gunsberg hopes A World of Pain will have a similar impact to A Matter of Life and Death, which was recognised at the 2022 Mental Health Service Awards.

“[My motivation] is, ‘How can I help someone who’s in the middle of [chronic pain], to give them the feeling that they’re not alone?’ And, ‘How can I help someone who can’t understand what’s going on with someone they love, and make them feel less alone?’ I think we’ve done that with this film.”

Osher Gunsberg: A World Of Pain is on Thursday, November 21, at 8.30pm on SBS.

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