Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 25, 1993 TAG: 9310250059
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT BLANCHARD STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
As medical examinations came and went in August and September, P.J. Preston faced a paradox: He wanted to be healthy, but he wanted to flunk a physical.
A co-captain of Virginia Tech's football team, one of the Hokies' strongest and fastest athletes, Preston saw his senior season reduced to a bizarre episode: trying to figure out why he gagged, and sometimes vomited, whenever he began strenuous physical activity.
Preston was visiting physicians and a psychiatrist. His family worried; acquaintances offered sympathy; from the curious came discomforting queries. He left the team Aug. 26, about three weeks after the symptom forced him off the practice field, and didn't visit the locker room, practice field or coaches' offices.
His inner circle became Tech quarterback and roommate Maurice DeShazo, team manager Bruce Garnes and former Hokies Jerome Preston (P.J.'s cousin) and Mark Poindexter.
"He wasn't himself," said Garnes, who attended Magna Vista High School, near Preston's alma mater of Martinsville. "P.J.'s probably one of the happiest people that I know. At times you could tell it was getting to him."
So much so that emotions sometimes welled when DeShazo would leave for Tech's game each Saturday. Preston didn't go.
"It was like, `Best of luck,' high-five, hug, `Bye,' " DeShazo said.
Preston took up golf to take his mind off the problem, even hitting the links with his father for the first time. DeShazo and Garnes said they didn't talk about the gagging with Preston, didn't ask about it, didn't dwell on it.
"I was concerned, but I wasn't like Mom or Dad," DeShazo said.
Preston's real Mom and Dad - and his brother and sister - fretted and hoped as tests or failed remedies ruled out an ulcer, a hernia, throat problems, gastrointestinal illness, the flu, allergies, heart problems and nervous-system disorders.
Suggested cures came from people who had read of Preston's "mystery illness," as well as family members.
"P.J. has always been very quiet, soft-spoken," said his mother, Mildred. "We told him, `Maybe what you need to do is go out there and do a little yelling, kicking and stomping. Maybe you're holding something in.' "
Preston was convinced his problem wasn't stress-related, despite the fact that he entered summer practice needing to learn a new position - defensive end - for the second time in six months.
By the time counselor Dan Porter of Roanoke called Tech team doctor Duane Lagan with a theory and a proposed treatment - medical hypnotherapy - Preston, who had seemed embarrassed about seeing a psychiatrist, no longer was choosy.
"I was kind of skeptical," said Preston, who has overcome his problem but left the team for good last week. "[But] after a while, the condition just bothered me so much I was willing to do anything."
\ A learning stage
Within days Preston was in Porter's office, staring at a spot on his hand as Porter carefully coaxed him into concentrating on a few different things at once until Preston was in the trance that would allow Porter to teach him how to stop the gagging.
Louis Preston, P.J.'s father, had worried for weeks about his son's illness. He never thought the cure might be hypnosis, a procedure probably associated more with dangling pocket watches and zombie-like trances than current uses that include crime victim/suspect interrogation and pain relief.
"That wasn't my first option, let me put it that way," Louis Preston said.
A Boston doctor's study published in January claimed that one-third of Americans seek "non-mainstream" medical treatments, spending $14 billion a year on an assortment of techniques, including hypnosis.
The American Medical Association has no formal policy on hypnotherapy. In 1990, its Council on Scientific Affairs studied published material about hypnotherapy and concluded the procedure can be successful, but it faulted the research as "inadequate and inconclusive."
Bill Hoffman, executive vice president of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis (ASCH), acknowledged some physicians in what he called "the Bible Belt, Deep South" dismiss hypnotherapy as "the devil's work." But, he said, the ASCH estimates 25,000 to 35,000 of the approximately 250,000 physicians in the United States use hypnotherapy; about another 100,000, Hoffman said, "are going to tell you hypnosis does work."
Porter had work to do before he could begin treating Preston.
"You have to de-mythologize coming to someone like myself," said Porter, who specializes in adult and pediatric behavioral medicine. "It doesn't mean you're insane or crazy. I said, `I won't make you make bird sounds.' "
Medical hypnotherapy, Porter said, isn't hypnosis performed by a doctor. It's a technique used to treat medical symptoms - like Preston's gagging. And it is not commonly used on athletes.
Hoffman said hypnotherapy is effective in working to change conditioned reflexes. "Sports hypnotherapy" often is used to improve an athlete's performance through relaxation and concentration, Hoffman said, and cited an ASCH member who worked with Canada's Olympic track team to help its sprinters avoid false starts.
Bill Morgan, a kinesiology professor at the University of Wisconsin and director of its sports psychology lab, couldn't call to mind an example of an athlete being treated by hypnosis for a physical symptom.
Ian Wickram, director of the Behavioral Medicine Clinic and Stress Disorder Research Laboratory at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, said in 25 years he has treated 15 to 20 athletes for physical symptoms - for example, bowlers who develop spasms that ruin their form.
Porter spent the first session explaining hypnotherapy to Preston and figuring out that the gagging had become a conditioned reflex after it had occurred a couple of times when Preston had been sick and tried to work out.
The first session brought Preston's first trance, what Porter called a "light-to-medium" state that Preston could pull himself out of at will. The trance is so relaxing, Porter said, the patient stays in it and "you're capable of intervening successfully and accomplishing a lot."
Porter taught Preston a form of self-hypnosis combined with a visualization technique designed to help Preston quell the gagging at its onset. After the first session, Porter had Preston run in place in his office. No gagging.
"He called us [and said]: `A strange thing happened. As quickly as I went into the gagging, I came out,' " Mildred Preston said, and described subsequent phone calls to her son.
"Did you run?"
"Yeah."
"Did it happen?"
"No."
"What did you do?"
Preston was practicing the four-step visualization technique, trying to learn it well enough so he could do it in seconds on a football field if he had to.
And he was beginning to think about rejoining the team.
\ A second try
Preston not only had to overcome the gagging, the oddity of his problem - he wasn't walking on crutches or wearing a neck brace - invited rumors. DeShazo and others in and close to the program heard them.
He made it up. Not true; Lagan and DeShazo, at least, have seen Preston gag. "It's not pretty," DeShazo said.
He faked it because he wasn't playing well and wanted an out. "Damn that," DeShazo said. "If you think he's happy because he can't play, you're crazy. Try becoming his roommate."
He only wanted to come back because Tech was winning. Preston sought treatment before Tech had played a game, and he continues to see Porter even though he will not play again for Tech.
He's coming back too soon. "People offered their advice and their opinions," Preston said. "It all boils down to me. I'm going to do what I want to do. I think I kind of pressured myself. I'm a competitor."
Preston, Lagan and coach Frank Beamer discussed the player's return. Beamer discussed it with the team captains and agreed to take Preston back; DeShazo said none of the players had a problem with Preston returning, even though he had distanced himself from the team while he was being treated. Preston said he did that because the team and coaches "really didn't need the hassle on their minds."
Preston came back the week of the West Virginia game, taking Porter's advice to simply attend practice for a week before participating. He practiced the following Tuesday, missed practice to see Porter on Wednesday, and met with Beamer again on Thursday.
Preston said he told Beamer he was not 100 percent cured; Porter had stressed that the symptom would return from time to time but could be controlled. Porter said he feels Preston has recovered from the gagging enough to move on to "sports hypnotherapy," a technique to enhance performance through hypnosis and visualization.
Beamer said he told Preston the player could handle his return "how he wanted to," which meant he could practice in a limited capacity until he felt fully healed.
"I told him he didn't have to be [100 percent to practice]," Beamer said. "The next thing we knew, P.J. had decided to leave the football team."
Preston said he didn't feel he could practice at less than 100 percent and said it was "my decision" to quit for the second time. Preston has said he wasn't thrilled with the reception he got from some coaches upon returning. Preston He wrote a column in the Oct. 19 edition of Tech's student newspaper, the Collegiate Times, scathingly critical of college coaches.
Beamer vigorously denies any suggestion that anyone tried to force Preston off the team.
Preston's illness concerned his teammates, his recovery and return buoyed them and his departure brought them down.
"I still don't think it ended the way it needed to end," DeShazo said. "[The players] heard about what happened [when he left]. They felt bitter [about] the way he went out - not because of him."
Preston still rooms with DeShazo, a leader of a Tech team in the middle of its best season in Beamer's seven years as coach, and still hangs out with Garnes, Jerome Preston and Poindexter.
He no longer is a regular at practice, in the weight room or, of course, in the locker room.
"The players don't think he's a quitter," said Garnes, a Tech manager for five years. "I think they want to see him healthy. I think he was on a lot of their minds. He's still one of the boys."
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