I don't care about my modification count, but leaving it around would annoy someone and then cause a rejection. (And rejections I need to study, learn, and figure out if I should appeal.)
When you visited the page to make the change was there an indication that there was a pending modification? If I were a referee I would like to know about pending modification requests on an item before I made a change so my changes wouldn't unintentionally invalidate the request.