Khloé Kardashian finds a silver lining in the trauma of her past with ex-husband Lamar Odom.
In Thursday’s episode The KardashiansKhloé (39) had a heart-to-heart with ex Tristan Thompson about caring for his younger brother Amari Thompson.
As Khloé explained in the episode, the 17-year-old lives with a severe form of epilepsy called Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS), which leaves him wheelchair-bound and in need of 24-hour support. After Tristan and Amari’s mom Andrea died in January, Tristan became his brother’s legal guardian. Khloé has also been involved in the day-to-day care of the teenager, especially while he and Tristan, 32, have been living with her amid Tristan’s home renovations.
“There’s no playbook, there’s no rulebook,” Khloé said in a confessional about Amara’s condition. “We don’t know what the hell we’re doing. And I say ‘we’ because I’m on top of all the medical stuff for Amari.”
Lamar Odom recalls waking up to find Khloé Kardashian next to him after overdose: ‘That was huge’
Although it was a challenging experience for her, Khloé admitted that she felt somewhat ready to take on the role of housekeeper after her ex-husband Lamar’s near-fatal overdose at a Las Vegas brothel in 2015.
“I definitely feel overwhelmed, but nothing I can’t handle. I just want to help in any way I can to help relieve some kind of responsibility for people grieving the loss of their mother,” Khloé explained in the confessional. “I don’t know if this sounds really dark and I don’t even know if anyone would understand this … but I feel like I’m equipped with the tools because of what I went through with Lamar, who couldn’t walk, who was bedridden, who he couldn’t speak for months.”
In her conversation with Tristan, Khloé continued, “For my ex-husband, when he was in a coma, some of the doctors said, ‘He can’t hear, he has brain damage.’ I played music that I knew he liked and I would always talk to him. And then when he could talk, he’d say, ‘I heard everything he had to say, I’d try to talk to you,’ and I was like, ‘I knew it! ‘ So who knows how much Amari knows?”
Tristan and Amari Thompson.
Tristan Thompson/ Instagram
Khloé Kardashian Says She Feels ‘Bad’ About Exes Tristan Thompson and Lamar Odom ‘Every Day’
Khloé married Lamar on September 27, 2009 – a month after they met. In 2013, the marriage began to fall apart after an NBA player cheating scandal and a drug relapse. By December, Khloé filed for divorce.
In July 2015, both stars finally signed the divorce papers. But on October 13, 2015, Lamar was rushed to the hospital after his years-long battle with drug addiction came to a head when he was found unconscious in a brothel in Nevada. He remained in the hospital, mostly in a coma, for months.
“All my doctors who see me say I’m a walking miracle. I had 12 strokes and six heart attacks while I was in a coma,” Lamar previously said of the medical ordeal. “Every day I am alive. It’s much better than the alternative.”
Despite their ongoing divorce at the time, Khloé rushed to the hospital and stayed by Lamar’s side. The Good American founder – who made all of Lamar’s medical decisions – eventually decided to end their long-running divorce proceedings. However, after Lamar was released from the hospital and on the road to recovery, the two formalized their split in December 2016.
“Khloé never left me,” Lamar previously wrote — an act of loyalty to their former relationship that he said in a 2018 interview “was huge.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(709x0:711x2)/khloe-lamar-2-2000-1f67ffdb2eb24e79aede1ae2f677b158.jpg)
Khloé Kardashian and Lamar Odom.
As for Tristan and Amari, their mom, Andrea, died suddenly of a heart attack on January 5, 2023. After her death, Khloé flew with Tristan to Toronto, joining him to comfort him and help him navigate the following days — even though they didn’t were in a romantic relationship longer.
Since Andrea was Amari’s primary caregiver, Tristan filed for sole legal custody of his younger brother on Sept. 8, claiming that their father, Trevor Thompson, had been absent from Amari’s life since 2014 and that Tristan was Amari’s closest living family member . A few weeks later, he was granted temporary custody of Amari.
The two are now living together in a house in Hidden Hills, after a brief stint at Khloé’s home after Tristan’s house was damaged by extreme weather.
Khloé Kardashian quietly welcomed Tristan Thompson and brother Amari after promising ‘We’ll all look out for him’
During Thursday’s episode, Tristan expressed his gratitude to Khloé for coming to their aid in their time of need.
After everything that happened with my mom, I needed someone to help me through this, and you answered the call, Tristan told his ex.
Despite their troubled past, Khloé said she didn’t think twice about supporting Tristan. “When my dad died, I didn’t think for three years, at least … so I can’t imagine losing my mom and then having the responsibility to take care of anyone,” she told him. “Because you hardly want to take care of yourself. At least I do, you just want to be depressed, and you have every right to be.”
She added: “I’ll always be there, that’s the real deal.”
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
New episodes The Kardashians drop every Thursday at 12am ET on Hulu.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education