Crashing on XBox 360

I'm playing ME3 on a new Xbox 360 that I picked up just a couple months back.  ME3 is from the trilogy pack.  I played it fairly well for a little while, then decided I wanted to get my DLC and patches.  I downloaded patch .... and now the game crashes when I do ANYTHING relating to saving a character.  Create new character and initial save?  Crash.  In the Citadel, want to save before moving on?  Crash.  

What, exactly, is going on here?  I've already tried resetting the Xbox Cache (several times, in fact) and restoring game defaults under' Extras."  I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the patch.  I am still dissastisfied.  And I am more than a little frustrated, bordering on angry.  How do I fix this?