Marriage: 100/100 not 50/50
Frohardt's formula for 24 years of marriage: both spouses give 100% of themselves rather than treating it as a 50/50 transaction.
Snapshot · The Shawn Ryan Show
#313 Eric Frohardt - DEVGRU Gold Squadron Sniper and Assaulter
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Jun 15, 2026
Where this was said
Meeting Leah, Losing the Kidney, and a 6-Week Wedding in Vail
At 2:06:10 · chapter starts 2:06:00
At Fort Chaffee during IAD training, the kidney pain didn't pass after two or three days as usual — this time it lasted four. His OIC Clint Bruce took him to see his urologist stepfather, who used contrast X-ray to finally make the correct diagnosis: massive kidney stone trapped in a ureteral scarred by years of damage. The sound-wave procedure worked, but follow-up surgery at Balboa revealed the kidney itself was a distended water balloon — 8 hours on the table to remove it safely, a scar that nearly required a rib removal, and a fiancée who sat waiting through what was supposed to be a 90-minute procedure. He signed the non-deployable waiver on morphine, never read it, and within six weeks was marrying Leah in a Navy dress uniform on Pearl Harbor Day. Two weeks after that, he deployed for nine and a half months.
Lost a kidney — missed 12 years of proper diagnosis
A kidney stone and congenital scar tissue in Frohardt's ureter went undiagnosed from boot camp through sniper school before finally being treated, by which point his kidney was a non-functional 'water balloon' requiring 8-hour surgery.
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