Katherine Heigl may have exited Grey’s Anatomy in 2010, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t retained some of the skills she learned.
The Firefly Lane star, 46, shared the medical knowledge she held onto all these years while chatting exclusively with Parade amid her partnership with Poise.
“I do think I’d still be good at sutures,” Heigl says. “I do, because that’s like a muscle memory thing, and we had to do a lot of that. Not on real people, but I think I could give it a go. If anybody needs that, I’ll give it a shot.”
The One for the Money actress goes on to joke that although she can likely stitch someone up, that’s about as far as it goes.
“It is the running joke in our family. If anybody has anything going on, I’m like, ‘Well, you know, I used to be a doctor. Let me help you with that,’” she tells Parade. “[But] it was all sort of in one ear and out the other. They used words that were so medical and so doctorate to say something as simple as high blood pressure, and I could not tell you what that word is today, but I know high blood pressure! I didn’t retain much of it, though.”
In addition to speaking about her Grey’s knowledge, Heigl got candid about some of the symptoms she started experiencing after giving birth — like bladder leaks — which made her partnership with Poise a no-brainer.
“Post-pregnancy … the old bladder was not working the same. I actually had a cesarean because Joshua was breech and had a really big head,” she explains. “But that is its own slew of postpartum issues and healing. Everything could have changed, just even the way even my hips went back into place changed, you know? I do think we need to be more honest with each other about it. I had no idea.”
Heigl also tells Parade all about the Jason Heigl Foundation, which was founded by her and her mom Nancy Heigl in 2008 and is dedicated to animal welfare and ending abuse.
“We became aware that there’s such a huge pet overpopulation problem in our country specifically, and so many were being euthanized, like, healthy, adoptable dogs euthanized every day in shelters because they’re overcrowded,” she explains. “So, we thought, we could always donate to the big, you know, foundations and stuff, but we had some specific ideas about where we wanted to see that money go. So we figured, let’s start our own foundation and really try to make the impact that we believe is possible. We’re very, very passionate.”
