“I was pretty scared”: Former Golf Channel personality Charlie Rymer’s coronavirus battle
Charlie Rymer is almost invariably jovial and witty.
His eternal congeniality is one of the primary reasons he became one of the more popular personalities on Golf Channel during his 11-year run on the network, then was hired by the Golf Tourism Solutions technology and marketing agency to promote and represent the Myrtle Beach golf market.
But his tone Wednesday was decidedly reserved, relieved — and thankful.
Rymer, 52, contracted the coronavirus, and he isn’t one of the lucky ones who were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms and quickly recovered.
He was hospitalized for five days, lost nearly 20 pounds over 10 days, and is still wearily recovering from the “strong force” that attacked his big 6-foot-4 body.
He was released from Tidelands Waccamaw Community Hospital on Tuesday and was still weak and coughing intermittently on Wednesday while talking about his experience.
“I’m weak, but it’s a good kind of weak from where I’ve been,” he said. “I imagine it will be a few weeks before I’m 100 percent, maybe sooner, I don’t know. But I’m sitting at home with my dogs and my wife and one kid is coming this weekend, so it’s all good.”
At low points during his lonely battle with COVID-19, Rymer feared he might never again see his two adult sons, Hayden and Charlie.
“A couple times I thought I was going to have to try to get my boys on the line. I was pretty scared buddy,” Rymer said. “But then when it turned, it turned quickly. It was like the meds got a hold of it and I started noticing pretty quickly. I got some hope pretty quick.”
Rymer reacted well to doses of the antiviral medication remdesivir. “I responded really well to the meds they gave me,” said Rymer, whose wife, Carol, is a post-surgery registered nurse at Tidelands’ hospitals in Georgetown and Murrells Inlet.
Rymer, a Fort Mill native, moved to Murrells Inlet early in 2019 after leaving Golf Channel and agreeing to a five-year contract with Golf Tourism Solutions.
He hasn’t identified where he may have been infected. He recently had a business trip through Chattanooga, Tennessee, and western North Carolina.
“You try to stay diligent and follow the rules, but this thing has a way of finding people,” he said. “Pretty quickly I was dealing with a high fever, chills and sweats and that sort of stuff, and I measured my fever as high as 104.7. Of course that’s pretty uncomfortable. The thing that was most frustrating for me was difficulty breathing.”
He experienced other symptoms such as a loss of taste and smell. “You don’t really have an appetite,” Rymer said.
He treated the virus with over-the-counter flu medications such as Tylenol and decongestants while drinking a lot of fluids for about five days at home. He and his wife monitored his vitals, and when his blood oxygen level got too low she decided to have him admitted to the hospital.
“It’s that mix of uncertainty and being uncomfortable and knowing this thing is strong,” Rymer said. “The underlying part of this thing is it’s strong. I could feel that a few times and that’s the part that scared me. It was like I got a tiger by the tail.”
Difficulty breathing and a debilitating cough were the scariest parts of Rymer’s ordeal.
“When you start coughing you can’t stop and then you have spasms involuntarily on the back end of it,” Rymer described. “That was the part that took the longest to get under control. You get a little something you normally clear your throat for and 10 minutes later you’re still coughing uncontrollably from that trigger. Then you get these involuntary spasms that come afterwards and you’re afraid it’s going to trigger your next coughing fit. And the more you cough you feel your oxygen going down.”
He wasn’t allowed visitors as a coronavirus patient, so his five days in the hospital were spent in solitude aside from nurse and doctor visits to the room about every four hours.
“It’s emotional really. You just think, ‘Here I am.’ Family can’t get to you and that’s frustrating,” Rymer said. “You look at the numbers for example. You think, ‘Oh well, the mortality rate is 1 or 2 percent or whatever it is if I get this, I’ve got a 98 percent chance of making it, and you try to focus on that, but at the same time you’re like, ‘Damn, there’s a 2% chance of not making it.’ I’d rather be on a golf course somewhere trying to not three-putt rather than worrying about being the 2%.
“It kind of creeps in your mind. You know when you go in you don’t want to wind up getting too deep in their tool box where they have to intubate of ventilate or anything like that. When your oxygen level stabilizes and starts going up, you know you’re responding to the treatment they’re giving you and that gives you a lot of hope.”
The novelty of COVID-19 allowed doubt to enter Rymer’s mind.
“They’re making their very best guesses,” Rymer said. “Pretty much anything you go to the hospital for they have 40 years of data on. This thing, they’re reading as they go along. . . . It’s still intimidating because nobody knows. The thing is so new and it’s so different for everybody.”
Support from Rymer’s many friends in the golf community helped him find resolve to battle the virus.
“Friends both in this community and beyond were reaching out and texting and there were a lot of folks praying for me, and that helped,” Rymer said.
Rymer was complimentary of and thankful for the care he received from the hospital’s caregivers who are putting their health at risk every day to treat others. He said the hospital was well prepared to receive coronavirus patients.
“Even though they’re minimizing contact with the folks coming in these are still folks with families that are on the front line,” Rymer said. “You’re really appreciative that they’re there and laying it on the line for somebody walking in the door that they don’t know. That’s really special.”
He hosts online golf show
As part of his work with Golf Tourism Solutions, Rymer has the online show the Charlie Rymer Golf Show that is sponsored by PlayGolfMyrtleBeach.com.
He filmed several episodes before he became ill, and the first 13 feature Coastal Carolina alumnus Dustin Johnson, Jack Nicklaus, Peter Jacobsen, Colt Ford, Rees Jones, leadership author David Novak, comedian Henry Cho, former Sports Illustrated publisher and managing editor Mark Mulvoy, and a panel of Myrtle Beach golf leaders.
“I’ve been real happy with it. We’ve been able to have some great guests on,” Rymer said. “Before this hit we had been really busy and we had quite a few in the can. I think we have been able to get a good amount of material out there for Myrtle Beach and hopefully we can get back going on some of that pretty quickly.”
Rymer said his ordeal will likely lead him to reassess many things.
“I imagine going through this, once I get away from it a little bit I’ll be reevaluating a lot of things in life, to be honest with you, some priorities and some other things,” Rymer said.
Rymer hosts tourney
Rymer is the host of the inaugural Saintnine Shootout, a 36-hole tournament on Sept. 5-6 at Caledonia Golf & Fish Club and Pawleys Plantation.
The event is capped at 120 players and an entry fee of $175 includes two rounds, a dozen Saintnine U-Pro golf balls and shoulder wraps from SParms Sun Protection. Players will have an opportunity to participate in a variety of cash games, and Rymer said the tournament’s emphasis will be on having fun.
Rymer will host festivities and interact with participants throughout the event, which comes on the heels of the 37th annual PlayGolfMyrtleBeach.com World Amateur Handicap Championship’s championship round on Sept. 4.
Based in South Korea, Saintnine manufactures golf balls that were introduced to the U.S. market in February 2019, and Rymer is a company brand ambassador. Saintnine will also be a prize sponsor of the World Am and provide daily contest winners with a dozen golf balls.
Visit SaintnineShootout.com for more information.
This story was originally published July 2, 2020 at 11:03 AM.
