Beyond Recovery? Illustrator Ate My Project.

I've been working on a project for about three days (on a MacBookPro). I finished it off today ay a cafe. When I attempted to open the file this evening the following message appeared: "Can't open the illustration. The illustration contains an illegal operand." Followed by: "Offending operator: '(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( (((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( . . . '"
When I click the "OK" button, the file opens but the image--as well as every layer or anything related to the image--is gone (!!).
When I do a search of my hard drive, the thumbnail of the image appears (there it is!), but when I attempt to open the file via the thumbnail the same "illegal operand" business appears. I've shut down and restarted my comp and Illustrator to no avail. I've never seen this occur since I ordered Illustrator about three years ago and am crushed by the loss of three days' work. Can anyone offer some advice on what's happened and how to recover the image (which I saved about a billion times while constructing it, btw)?

Update:
By searching for "illegal operand" I found the following:
17. Oct 21, 2009 4:11 PM in response to: (Ben_Grefsrud)
Re: HELP! Illegal operand error - can't open file! (v.2)
This just happened to me on a huge project! I was able to recover everything, except for the fonts were no longer in text boxes, and the clipping paths had to be recreated. Here's what I did:
Open a new doc in illustrator. Place the corrupted file into the new document. Select the file that is placed and choose Object, Flatten Transparency. Leave all of the defaults. Then remove the clipping mask on the flattened object by clicking command shift 7. You should then be able to click into the group, or simply ungroup to get at your design.
I hope this helps!
Everything worked up to "Then remove the clipping mask . . . ". The recommended Command-Shift-7 doesn't seem to have an effect.
Edited to Add: When I target the image there's an option to edit the clipping path in the top-left of the control panel. But I do not know how to remove the clipping path itself, as suggested by Ben_Grefsrud. Any tips?

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ermega,
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Beyond Recovery? Illustrator Ate My Project.

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