Yes, that would seem to confirm what people have been saying lately, that WHCC's quality is slipping.
Nothing changes. You need to calibrate such that your screen matches your lab's prints. The numbers are somewhat meaningless.
Good grief, you don't use Curves for that, and you definitely don't use the black eyedropper.
http://www.damiensymonds.net/2013/02/using-photo-filter-layer-to-fix-casts.htm
For the area, I don't have any magic tricks for you, sorry. You'll just need to copy one stripe at a time from further down his chest, move and rotate it into position, then mask it in, and lighten it as needed. It'll be very painstaking.