About the Artist
Michael Natter is a board-certified internal medicine physician and endocrinologist currently practicing at NYU Langone Health, New York City, New York. He is a visual artist, a doctor, and also a patient—he has been living with type 1 diabetes since he was a child. Dr. Natter completed his medical education at Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University, Internal Medicine, and NYU/Bellevue, and stayed on to complete his endocrinology fellowship at NYU/Bellevue. As he describes, Dr. Natter’s background in studio art has allowed him to approach medicine through a nontraditional lens, and his journey from “art kid” to postbaccalaureate premedical student to endocrinologist has allowed him to harness the inherent art that is in medicine. Dr. Natter was awarded Endocrine Fellow of the Year in 2021 and 2022, as well as the Fellow’s Teaching Award in 2022. His art has been featured in a number of media outlets, including Medscape, BuzzFeed, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Dr. Natter can be found on Instagram (@mike.natter), Twitter (@mike_natter), and TikTok (@mikenatter).
On the Cover: “Calloused Fingertips”
The following is a description of the artwork on the cover of this issue of Diabetes Care, titled “Calloused Fingertips,” as written by the artist, Dr. Michael Natter:
When I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes just weeks after my ninth birthday, it was a different time of glucose management. Continuous glucose monitors did not exist, and the only way to know if your blood glucose was stable, falling, or rising was to wait and test again. It felt like flying an airplane with a blindfold on. It also meant I was pricking my finger upward of 12 times a day. That amassed to about 73,000 finger sticks prior to the introduction of continuous glucose monitors. In my teenage years, I began collecting my used test strips knowing I would use them in some form with an art project; I just had not known what it would look like yet. Years later while in medical school, I had the idea of using them to create a self-portrait. While diabetes has certainly been a massive part of my life and gave me my calling in life, it also very much does not define me as a person. When you see the self-portrait up close, you can only see the test strips, the microcosm of my every day. But when you step back, you can see my face, the macrocosm, a reminder that I am more than just my diabetes.
