Fixed the Shower!

I bought a new shower spray thingy while at Lowes this afternoon. When I removed the old one, I found that a screen in the base, which mounts on the pipe, was clogged. I knew there was a screen lower down, and had cleaned that, but forgot about the top one.

I'm wondering if the sharp reduction in flow after replacing the valve gaskets was due to knocking stuff loose which then was pushed up and into the screen after I finished and tried the valves.