Khloé said she felt better “equipped” to care for Amari after Lamar’s near-fatal overdose in 2015, where the NBA player was unable to walk, speak or get out of bed for months

From left: Lamar Odom, Khloé Kardashian, and Tristan Thompson with brother Amari. PHOTO:  LEON BENNETT/GETTY, CHRISTOPHER POLK/E! ENTERTAINMENT/NBCUNIVERSAL/NBCU PHOTO BANK VIA GETTY, GEORGE PIMENTEL/GETTY

Khloé Kardashian is finding a silver lining in the trauma of her past with ex-husband Lamar Odom.

On Thursday’s episode of The Kardashians, Khloé, 39, had a heart-to-heart conversation 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 has left him wheelchair-bound and requiring around-the-clock support. After Tristan and Amari’s mom Andrea died in January, Tristan became his brother’s legal guardian. Khloé has also been involved with the teen’s day-to-day care, especially while he and Tristan, 32, were living with her amid Tristan’s home renovation.

“There’s no playbook, there’s no rule book,” Khloé said in a confessional of Amari’s condition. “We don’t know what the hell we’re doing. And I say ‘we’ because I am on all of the medical stuff for Amari.”

Though it’s been a challenging experience for her, Khloé admitted that she felt somewhat prepared to step into this caretaker role after her ex-husband Lamar’s near-fatal overdose in a Las Vegas brothel in 2015.

“I definitely feel overwhelmed, but nothing that I can’t handle. I just want to help in any way that I can help relieve some sort of responsibility to people who are grieving the loss of their mother,” Khloé explained in a 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 couldn’t speak for months.”

In her conversation with Tristan, Khloé continued, “With my ex-husband, when he was in his coma, some of the doctors were like, ‘He can’t hear, he’s brain-damaged.’ I would play music that I knew he liked and I would just always talk to him. And then when he was able to talk, he would say, ‘I heard everything you would say, I would 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 married Lamar on Sept. 27, 2009 — one month to the day after they met. In 2013, the marriage began to fall apart following the NBA player’s cheating scandal and drug relapse. By December, Khloé had filed for divorce.

In July 2015, both stars finally signed divorce papers. But on Oct. 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 Nevada brothel. He remained in the hospital, mostly comatose, for months.

“All my doctors that see me say I’m a walking miracle. I had 12 strokes and six heart attacks when I was in a coma,” Lamar previously said of the medical ordeal. “Every day, I’m alive. It’s much better than the alternative.”

Despite their ongoing divorce at the time, Khloé rushed to the hospital and remained by Lamar’s side. The Good American founder — who was making all of Lamar’s medical decisions — ultimately opted to call off their protracted divorce proceedings. However, once Lamar had been discharged from the hospital and was on the road to recovery, the two formalized their split in December 2016.

“Khloé never left my side,” Lamar previously wrote — an act of loyalty to their former relationship that he said in a 2018 interview “was big.”

Khloé Kardashian and Lamar Odom.

As for Tristan and Amari, their mom Andrea died suddenly of a heart attack on Jan. 5, 2023. Following her death, Khloé flew with Tristan to Toronto, joining him to comfort and help him navigate the following days — even though they were no longer in a romantic relationship.

Since Andrea was Amari’s primary guardian, Tristan requested sole legal guardianship of his younger brother on Sept. 8, claiming their father, Trevor Thompson, had been absent from Amari’s life since 2014 and Tristan was Amari’s closest living family member. He was eventually granted temporary guardianship of Amari a few weeks later.

The two now live in a home in Hidden Hills together, following a brief stay at Khloé’s home after Tristan’s house was damaged by extreme weather.

During Thursday’s episode, Tristan expressed his gratitude to Khloé for stepping up to help them in their time of need.

“After everything happened with my mom, I needed someone who could 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 straight for three years, minimum … so I can’t imagine losing my mom and then having the responsibility of taking care of anyone,” she told him. “Because you barely want to take care of yourself. At least I did, you just want to be depressed, and you have every right to be.”

She added, “I’ll always be there, it’s the right thing to do.”