Busy Philipps had the worst scare with her 15-year-old teenager.
In the latest episode of the actresses’ podcast, Busy Philipps Is Doing Her Best, the 44-year-old opened up about her teenage daughter Birdie, going through a seizure episode during the weekend while she had to watch over Facetime since Birdie goes to boarding school in Sweden.
She recalls the incident, saying, “I was just kind of like muttering to myself and then I heard Marc screaming for me and I was like, ‘What does this f—ing guy want now?'” referring to ex-husband Marc Silverstein, whom she shares Birdie and 11-year-old Cricket with. She says, “And I went upstairs but then I heard his voice and I knew something was really wrong. And he just said, ‘It’s Birdie, it’s Birdie. She’s had another seizure. The paramedics are on the phone.'”
The Mean Girls actress paused to recollect herself, not knowing whether she should continue, but she did so anyway. She said, “The paramedics were on FaceTime and she had just come out of the seizure and she was still in the post-aura state. They were like, hooking her up with stuff and on FaceTime,” she added, “I feel stuck. My therapist yesterday said, she was like ‘You sound like you’re disassociating.’ And I understand because I feel like this year has, I don’t understand what’s happening. I feel stuck in a f—ing movie, in a way that’s not even disassociating, just like I keep getting put in different movies. And I just want to be in mine, like my life again. Like my movie, where it’s OK.”
She further goes deeper into the story, revealing that Birdie and her friend Sarah were apparently traveling to Stockholm to watch the new Hunger Games movie in theatres when the incident took place. Philipps continued, “Her friend who was with her, she was holding the phone so she was kind of, it was like this weird medium shot. So you could see everything that was happening. So it felt, it was just so weird,” adding, “She was reaching toward the camera and just saying like, calling out for me. Just saying, ‘Mama. Mama. Mama. Where are you? Mama.'”
The White Chicks actress then recalled that the first time her 15-year-old daughter experienced a seizure, the mother was on the sets of Mean Girls. Recalling the somber incident, she says, “And I couldn’t, obviously I couldn’t leave set. And Marc had run to the school and had gotten there at the same time as the paramedics so he had seen her in this, similar sort of thing before. But it was really awful seeing it on a screen, being in a different country across an ocean.”
She then continued the incident in Stockholm, where she reiterated that she had seen the entire process through Facetime, stating, “So they’d gone to the movies in Stockholm. It’s actually amazing that they were there because their school is far…and there’s not a hospital where their school is. So they’d gone into Stockholm so they were literally two minutes from the children’s hospital,” she adds to this, “The paramedics were there almost immediately, I guess. And Birdie’s friend Sarah, shout out Sarah, literally, I don’t even understand. She’s 17 but this girl managed to get one person to go tell the theater, to shut it the f— down, she got two guys that they obviously didn’t know that were sitting behind, because Birdie started choking and throwing up, to move Birdie gently to the ground and put her on her side. She got someone else to call the Swedish 911.”
According to People, who gathered information from this podcast episode, Sarah then got someone else to call the paramedics and called their boarding school herself, contacting the house parent of their dorm and getting Birdie’s parents’ phone numbers. Philipps, meanwhile, said that she was trying to figure out a way to get to Sweden.
The Cougar Town actress continued explaining the grave incident, “I was literally googling private planes. I was like, ‘How much does it cost? $100,000? Can I put that on a credit card? How does that work?’ I was like, How do I not know anyone with a f—ing private plane. I got to hang out with fancier people. Would Taylor Swift fly me to Sweden right now? Who knows Taylor Swift?”
Post this podcast episode, the mother of two took to Instagram to post a string of pictures that documented her daughter’s time in the hospital, coupled with a lengthy caption. It read, “There wasn’t a new podcast last week because I was focused on getting through the week. But we’re back today and we go through most of the past week and a half in both our lives, per usual,” she added, “And I explain all the things that happened and try to get through it. Birdie is fine. I am fine. We are all going to be okay. But it’s been a long time. and a year.”
She concluded the post, writing, “And then, i saw that Charles Bukowski poem this morning (it’s the last slide) and remembered it from Hoffman and it’s exactly it, i think? I’d 1-10 these but honestly- if you listen to the pod you will probably get it. Even if you don’t. Either way, I love you.”