This scares me a bit.....
The one thing we have in common after reading this thread is we both used howards edm lifters.
That said I am making no accusations but seeing how our cams have similar carnage/low run time/same lifters it requires some looking into. I think we have one decent lifter to possibly check out and maybe the cam as well. Hopefully you will be able to check yours as well, It would be nice to compare our findings, I will post pics later.