Htmldb_Get() not updating session state?

Question

Thankfully, I solved this problem myself before posting this, but I still have questions about why I ran into the problem in the first place.
Alright, I have a javascript controlled interface on an ApEx page that uses htmldb_Get() for retrieving the current state of a row in the database and for submitting the data back to a page process to update the database row. I've checked my values from the javascript function that saves the data and the strings do contain the updated text from the interface, but when my page process fires off the strings have reverted to what was in the session state from the earlier AJAX request when the interface was loaded.
* I've checked the session state and the variables in question are reverted, but I noticed that the item statuses are listed as "Updated".
* I've also tested this process by passing the request string and page items in the URL and the process functions correctly.
* I've double checked the item definitions to see if the items were being overwritten (they weren't).
* I've checked the item types to make sure that none were "protected" (they weren't).
* I haven't found any error messages in logs within ApEx.
At this point I noticed that the AJAX requests to load the interface were showing up in the "Recent Page Views" report, but the save requests were not. For no particular reason I decided to switch from using the request string in the conditional for the page process and use a page item to control the mode as so...
WAS:
var get = new htmldb_Get(null,$x('pFlowId').value,'save_asset_tracking_info',11);
NOW:
var get = new htmldb_Get(null,$x('pFlowId').value,'',11);
get.add('P11_FORM_MODE','save_asset_tracking_info');
...and magically the page items in the session state are being updated and all is well. There are few things more frustrating than spending hours debugging a process, then fixing it with an action that you are completely convinced won't change a thing.
This make no sense to me and I'm hoping someone can explain it or at least point me in the right direction.
Thanks in advance,
Jason

Answer 1

Apologies if I skipped a few details in my first post...
I haven't included much of my source code because I don't believe it's the key to this issue. If you disagree, I will post the source code for your reference.
On page 10 of my application, I have a floating div interface that appears in front of the page content. This div is initially empty, but I use JavaScript to make an AJAX call to page 11, strip out a specific region using the get.get() function. On the floating interface, there is a "save" button that fires off another JavaScript function that uses htmldb_Get() and get.add() to post all 21 of the items from the floating interface back to a page process on page 11. The "save" page process is at process point "on load - before header" and is extremely simple -- "if ID found then update record, else insert record".
The problem I had was that after the "save" button was pressed, all of the items sent via AJAX to the page process were always identical to the initial values from when page 11 was rendered and the floating div interface was populated. This seemed like some sort of quirk or issue with the session state cache overwriting the values that were being sent via AJAX. As I said before, I checked the values in JavaScript immediately before the AJAX "save" submission and everything was kosher, but the page process never got those updated values.
I managed to eliminate this "symptom" by simply...
1. Setting the htmldb_Get() request string to null ("")
2. Adding one more get.add() call for P11_FORM_MODE
3. Changing the condition on which the page process was fired from the request string to the page item
All of the other get.add() calls remained the same as did the PL/SQL in the page process.
Thanks,
Jason