Busy Philipps’ 15-year-old daughter, Birdie, had a seizure earlier this month while at her boarding school in Sweden.
The “Cougar Town” alum recounted the “terrifying” incident on her podcast, “Busy Philipps is Doing Her Best,” on Wednesday, revealing that she had to watch the whole thing on FaceTime due to the teen being across the globe.
Philipps explained that she was downstairs sorting through things in her basement when she heard ex Marc Silverstein, with whom she shares Birdie, “screaming” for her.
“And I went upstairs but then I heard his voice and I knew something was really wrong,” she recalled. “And he just said, ‘It’s Birdie, it’s Birdie. She’s had another seizure. The paramedics are on the phone.’”
After Philipps, 44, — who seemed noticeably shaken — took a moment to gather herself, she continued on.
“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,” she said.
Philipps explained that Birdie and her friend Sarah had traveled from their boarding school to Stockholm to see the new “Hunger Games” movie, “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” when the seizure occurred.
“Her friend who was with her, she was holding the phone so she was kind of, it was like this weird medium shot,” she said, trying to add some humors to the traumatic situation. “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.’”
Although Silverstein had seen Birdie seizing before, Philipps revealed she was shooting the new “Mean Girls” movie when their daughter suffered the medical emergency for the first time, making the experience even more difficult.
“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,” she explained. “But it was really awful seeing it on a screen, being in a different country across an ocean.”
Despite the “chaotic” situation, Philipps says the paramedics talked to her “the whole time” through the phone before eventually hanging up to “focus” on helping Birdie.
The mother of two also gave Sarah a “shoutout” for springing into action and potentially saving her daughter.
Philipps explained that after noticing something was wrong, Sarah alerted the theater staff to shut off the movie, she got two boys sitting behind them to “move Birdie gently to the ground and put her on her side,” she “got someone else to call the Swedish 911” as well as the paramedics and also called the school to get Philipps’ phone number.
“That kid really f—king handled an emergency incredibly well,” she said of the 17-year-old.
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Philipps, Silverstein and their 11-year-old daughter, Cricket, then took the first flight out of New York to Sweden while Sarah waited in the hospital with Birdie overnight.
Once the teen was cleared and discharged, the couple packed up her things from school and took her back home to the States.
Although Birdie is “OK,” the experience took a major toll on the actress.
“I feel stuck,” she explained. “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—king 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 things are okay.”
Philipps also posted a few photos and videos from her brief trip to Sweden on Instagram Wednesday, explaining why she was unable to do a podcast episode the week prior.
“There wasn’t a new podcast last week because I was focused on getting through the week,” she explained. “Birdie is fine. I am fine. We are all going to be okay. But it’s been a time. and a year.”
The “Freaks and Geeks” alum announced on her podcast in May 2022 that she and Silverstein had been separated for over a year. The pair wed in 2007.
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