A parent’s worst nightmare…
On Wednesday’s episode of the Busy Philipps is Doing Her Best podcast, the actress revealed her daughter Birdie had a seizure earlier this month. So scary!! And even worse, the worried momma witnessed it on FaceTime… from all the way across the pond!
Recalling the horrific phone call, Busy explained that her daughter — who has been at boarding school in Sweden — went to see the new Hunger Games movie with her friend in Stockholm. But it turned into a super scary situation when she suddenly turned ill. Referencing her ex-husband and baby daddy, Marc Silverstein, she explained how she discovered the health issues:
“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**king guy want now?’ 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.'”
Oh no!
Related: Sia Undergoes Liposuction To Regain ‘Confidence’ After Recent Weight Gain
Getting emotional, the 44-year-old continued:
“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 on FaceTime. … [Birdie’s] friend [Sarah] 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.”
The kiddo, who has returned to using she/her pronouns, was even gesturing and calling out for her, saying, “Mama. Mama. Mama. Where are you? Mama.” Oof. That must’ve been so hard to hear — especially from so far away!
While noting it was probably good they were in the city since it is much closer to the hospital, the Dawson’s Creek alum had a lot of praise for her kid’s friend, who jumped into action:
“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**k 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.”
Meanwhile, Sarah called the house parent for their dorm and got Birdie’s parents’ numbers so she could loop them in on the spot. Such impressive quick thinking!
While Sarah was doing all of this, Busy was frantically trying to find the fastest way to her firstborn’s bedside, adding:
“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**king private plane. I got to hang out with fancier people. Would Taylor Swift fly me to Sweden right now? Who knows Taylor Swift?'”
So stressful! Elsewhere in the podcast, she noted this was not Birdie’s first seizure. The 15-year-old previously suffered one on her mother’s first day of filming for the Mean Girls musical, recalling:
“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.”
Such a worst-case scenario being so far from your child at a time of need. Thankfully, Busy did make it to the hospital eventually, and the teen is doing better. Once given the A-OK, the parents packed Birdie’s things and brought her home to the States, too. In an update on Instagram (HERE), Busy added:
“Birdie is fine. I am fine. We are all going to be okay. But it’s been a time. and a year.”
We can’t even begin to imagine. So glad Birdie is okay.
We are sending them all lots of love as they deal with this scary situation!
[Image via WWHL/YouTube & Busy Philips/Instagram]