The Challenge: Can you figure out what is wrong with a lively 67-year-old gardener who develops a daily fever and shaking chills along with chest pain and a dry cough?

Every month, the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine asks Well readers to solve a real-life diagnostic mystery. Below you will find the details of a case involving a retired maker of surgical supplies who starts having daily fevers along with chills, chest pain and a dry cough.

I’ll give you the same information the doctor was given before he made this diagnosis. Will you be able to figure out what’s wrong?

As usual, the first reader to submit the correct diagnosis gets a signed copy of my book, “Every Patient Tells a Story,” and the pleasure of puzzling out a tough but fascinating case.

The Patient’s Story

“NoNo says he doesn’t feel good,” the 9-year-old girl said of her grandfather, handing her mother the thermometer. The woman dried her hands on her apron and took the device. She squinted at the little electronic numbers. Just under 102 degrees.

Her father had been sick for weeks. Feverish, weak, not eating. It was late summer and the tomatoes and eggplants in the garden were ripe, but he hadn’t even walked through his garden for days, so she knew he wasn’t feeling well. But this was the first time he’d admitted that something more serious might be going on.

It was about time. She’d taken her 67-year-old father to several doctors over the past two months. They’d looked him over and given him antibiotics, but it hadn’t helped.

“Tell NoNo that if he’s feeling sick he’s got to go to the hospital,” she told the little girl. She darted back to her grandfather’s room then quickly returned. “He says he’s ready to go.”

The woman wasn’t sure exactly when her father had started to get sick, but six or seven weeks earlier she had noticed that he was no longer the first one out of bed. Instead of being up and out before 7 a.m., he wouldn’t get up until late morning. And he started to have strange shaking chills each afternoon and evening, followed by a fever — regular as clockwork.

He looked sweaty and pale. She asked him what was wrong, but he said he was fine. Or sometimes he’d say he felt a little tired. After an hour or two the fever would pass and he’d just look tired, but the next day, or sometimes the day after, the fever would be back.

The First Diagnosis

The woman first took her father to his regular doctor. Knowing how much he loved to work in his garden, the doctor figured he probably had Lyme disease. It was summertime, and Lyme was common in the area of Connecticut where they lived. Plus, he practically took root in the half-acre garden back behind the house where he lived with his wife and their children and grandchildren.

This was the first summer the woman could remember where her father wasn’t out in his garden every single day. This year it seemed that whole weeks would go by when he did nothing but look out the window at his beautiful handiwork.

Her father took antibiotics for the presumed Lyme. It didn’t help.

A Second Diagnosis

When the patient went for a follow-up visit, he told his doctor that his stomach was bothering him a bit. So he was referred to a gastroenterologist. That doctor diagnosed Helicobacter pylori – a bacterium tough enough to survive the acid environment of the stomach that can cause pain and ulcers.

He took two weeks of treatment for that — three medications to kill the bug, and one to neutralize the acid they thrive in. That didn’t stop the daily fevers, either.

Recently the man’s wife noticed that he’d developed a dry cough. Was this a pneumonia? His doctor gave him yet another antibiotic. And he was still taking that pill when he agreed to go to the emergency room.

Pneumonia?

So three generations — wife, daughter and granddaughter — got in the car with the man they loved and drove to the hospital where the daughter worked.

The emergency room was quiet when they arrived, and after explaining that the patient had been having fevers for weeks, the patient and his entourage were taken into the back so he could be seen right away.

He did have a fever but otherwise looked pretty healthy. The doctors there seemed to focus on the cough and fever. They figured he had a pneumonia that wasn’t responding to the antibiotics he was taking. And when a chest X-ray failed to show any sign of pneumonia at all, the doctors sent him home.

You can see the note from that first visit to the Emergency Department here.

First ER Visit

If Not Pneumonia, Then What?

The next day, the man felt no better. His daughter was distressed. Her father was sick. Antibiotics weren’t working. And he was getting worse.

She called his primary care doctor again. He was also worried, he told her. But he didn’t know what to suggest.

What if she tried a different emergency room?, she suggested. They had gone to Yale-New Haven Hospital initially because that’s where she worked, but what if they went to the smaller branch of the hospital, St. Raphael’s Hospital, less than a mile away. They had different doctors there, and the hospital had a different feel — local and friendly rather than big and academic. Maybe they would find a doctor there who could help them figure out what was going wrong. It was unorthodox, the doctor told her, to shop around emergency rooms. And it wasn’t clear what another E.R. visit might do. But he was also worried about the patient, and it was certainly worth a try.

Another E.R. Visit

So early that evening they all got back into the car and drove to the St. Raphael campus. The E.R. was bustling when the family came in. Once again he had a fever – 101.6 degrees. His family explained how sick he’d been, how tired. And yet when the doctor examined him, he seemed well enough. He couldn’t find anything abnormal beyond the fever.

The labs told a slightly different story. His red blood cell count was low. So were his platelets – a type of blood cell that helps blood to clot. What was particularly strange was that these two findings had been checked the day before at the other E.R. and had been fine. And there was some evidence that he had some liver damage.

And when tested for viral hepatitis — a common causes of abnormal liver tests — he tested positive for hepatitis A and possibly hepatitis B as well.

He was admitted to St. Raphael’s Hospital because of his worsening anemia and viral hepatitis.

You can see the note from this second emergency room visit, and the admission note from the night team here.

The Second ER Note

Admission Note

Fitting the Pattern

The next morning, Dr. Neil Gupta saw the patient. Hearing the patient’s story, and the diagnosis of hepatitis A infection, was a little puzzling. Patients with hepatitis usually have mild flu-like symptoms, with a loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting, plus fatigue, low-grade fever and a generalized sense of being unwell. Certainly this patient didn’t feel well, but he had no nausea, no vomiting. And his fever came in spikes. The pattern didn’t really match.

Dr. Gupta sat down with the patient’s family and reviewed all the symptoms and the timeline. Then he reviewed all the labs. He sent off a bunch of tests.

You can see Dr. Gupta’s note here.

The Doctor’s Note

Solving the Mystery

Dr. Gupta was finally able to figure out what was wrong with this man. Can you?

The first person to figure out what is really going on with this 67-year-old gardener gets a copy of my book and that lovely sense of satisfaction that comes from making a tough diagnosis.

Rules and Regulations: Post your questions and diagnosis in the comments section below. The winner will be contacted. Reader comments may also appear in a coming issue of The New York Times Magazine.