Odom walks after being flown to L.A. from Las Vegas
Lamar Odom was airlifted from a Las Vegas hospital to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles Monday night, and according to a statement from his family, has progressed to the point of walking.
"He continues to make miraculous progress, taking a few steps in Los Angeles," the statement from Alvina Alston, publicist for Odom's aunt JaNean Mercer said. Odom was accompanied from Nevada with his estranged wife Khloe Kardashian, according to ESPN's Ramona Shelburne.
The 35-year-old former NBA and reality TV star has reportedly been breathing on his own since Friday, and will begin physical therapy in Los Angeles.
The Nye County Sheriff's Office revealed last week that Richard Hunter, the media director at the Love Ranch where Odom was found unconscious Oct. 13, told dispatchers the 14-year NBA veteran had been using cocaine and had taken 10 herbal sexual enhancement pills over a three-day period.
Odom had several visitors in the Las Vegas hospital, including former Los Angeles Lakers teammate Kobe Bryant.
Tragedy has seemingly followed Odom, who lost his mother to cancer when he was 12 and was raised by his grandmother, as his father was an absentee drug addict. His grandmother passed away in 2003. In 2006, he lost his six-month-old son, Jayden, to SIDS, and Odom was shot at during a robbery weeks after the funeral. He lost a close cousin in 2011, and was a passenger in a vehicle that left a teenager dead in an accident later that year.
"Some of the things I've been through, a lot of people wouldn't have been able to stick it out, mentally," Odom told SLAM in 2010. "So many things have happened to me but I wouldn’t do anything over, because if I did, it wouldn’t be my story. It’s what makes me a unique individual."
Since his departure from the league, Odom has been arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence and repeatedly tied to reports of illicit drug use. In 2000-01, he was suspended for violating the NBA's anti-drug policy for the second time in an eight-month span.