Busy Philipps is opening up about a “terrifying” family medical emergency. On the Dec. 13 episode of her podcast Busy Philipps Is Doing Her Best, the Dawson’s Creek actress revealed her 15-year-old child Birdie, whom she shares with estranged husband Marc Silverstein, suffered a seizure while attending school in Sweden, something Philipps witnessed over FaceTime from her home in the U.S.
“I heard Marc screaming for me and I was like, ‘What does this f–king guy want now?’” Busy recalled. “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.’”
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According to Philipps, Birdie, who previously suffered a seizure in March while Philipps was shooting the Mean Girls movie musical in New Jersey, went to Stockholm with a friend, Sarah, to see the new Hunger Games movie. While sitting in the theater, Birdie “started choking and throwing up.” Her friend immediately called both local paramedics and Birdie’s family in the United States for help.
“She’s 17, but this girl managed to get one person to go tell the theater, to shut it…down,” Philipps said. “She got two guys that they obviously didn’t know that were sitting behind (them) – 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.”
Philipps said the ordeal was “terrifying,” recalling how “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 said Birdie’s friend 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. She was reaching toward the camera and just saying like, calling out for me. Just saying, ‘Mama. Mama. Mama. Where are you? Mama.’”
Thankfully, the girls’ decision to travel to Stockholm for the movie meant they “were literally two minutes from the children’s hospital,” Philipps said, adding that “the paramedics were there almost immediately.” On Instagram, where she shared a post of herself and Birdie at the hospital, Philipps shared that her daughter “is fine. I am fine. We are all going to be okay. But it’s been a time. And a year.”
