Commands out of sync; you can't run this command now [SOLVED]

I'm trying to run a few queries in sequence and I keep getting the error Commands out of sync; you can't run this command now in my php logs.

I have read: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4323...ommand-now, however I am not able to update /system/database/drivers/mysqli/mysqli_result.php

I've tried:
```
        $this->db->reset_query();
        $this->db->close();
        $this->db->initialize();
        $this->db->reconnect();
        mysqli_next_result( $this->db->conn_id );
        $query->free_result();
```
But they either give me the same error, or different errors which I will detail in the comments of my code.

The way my code is organized- I have a make_query method that takes a bunch of search options and figures out which tables to join and fields to search based on those.  Sometimes, I just want to count results, sometimes I want all of the resulting data, sometimes I just want distinct values for certain fields or to group by certain fields.  So I call make_query with my options, and then decide what to select afterwards.  I have also been saving my query text to report, so that users can see what query is being run. 

One interesting thing I have noted is that when I have no options set (ie there are no WHERE clauses in my SQL), I do not get this error and the multiple queries are able to run with no problem!

Here is my code:

Code:

//Get rows from tblPlots based on criteria set in options array
    public function get_plot_data($options=array()){
        $this->db->save_queries = TRUE;
        log_message('debug','before make query 1 get plot data');
        $this->make_query($options,'plot'); 
        log_message('debug','after make query 1 get plot data');
        $this->db->distinct();
     
        //Now, set select to return only requested fields
        if (!empty($options['fields']) and $options['fields']!="all" ){
            //Because other tables could be joined, add table name to each select
            array_walk($options['fields'], function(&$value, $key) { $value = 'tblPlots.'.$value;} );
            $this->db->select($options['fields']);
        }

        if (!empty($options['limit']) and $options['limit']>0){
            $this->db->limit($options['limit'], $options['offset']);
        }     
        //Get the resulting data
        $result=$this->db->get('tblProgram')->result();
        $query_text = $this->db->last_query();  //tried removing this but didn't help
        log_message('debug','query text '.$query_text); 
        $this->db->save_queries = FALSE;
        //get the number of rows
        //$this->db->reset_query();
        //$this->db->close();
        //$this->db->initialize();
        //$this->db->reconnect();
        //mysqli_next_result( $this->db->conn_id );
        //$this->db->free_result(); //Call to undefined method CI_DB_mysqli_driver::free_result()
        //$result->free_result(); //Call to a member function free_result() on array

        log_message('debug','before make query 2');
        $this->make_query($options,"plot");
        $this->db->select('pkProgramID');
        log_message('debug','before count results');
//this is where my code errors out trying to do the next step:
        $count=$this->db->count_all_results('tblProgram');
}

I'm not including the code for make_query because it is long and calls other functions, but it runs successfully the first time and outputs the SQL query I would expect.  If it would be helpful, I can include that code as well.

I'm not sure how to correctly call free_result() given that the CI documentation only gives an example using query('SQL QUERY'), so I'm not sure how to use free result in my scenario?  Maybe that's the issue? 

Code:

$query2 = $this->db->query('SELECT name FROM some_table');
$query2->free_result();

Thank you for any help!