@netadmin The stale element is because you are likely leaving the page, then coming back to the page and trying to interact with the element again like it was in the past and that gives you a stale element. Russ states it like:
I generally get the element again and then interact with it (maybe you are in a loop).
Also, are you wanting to use Regular Expression? Unless you are truly using RegEx, then you should set the boolean to false.