Help! Empty home folder, vanished sparse bundle, and now I can't log in -

I was trying to free up space on my MacBook Pro and looking into the biggest space-eaters on my hard drive, and ran across something huge called a sparse bundle. I did some research, and at first thought this was a backup of my home folder, and with space so tight decided to delete it, figuring I'd backup externally later. Luckily it wouldn't empty from trash, and I pulled it back onto my desktop. I then learned that it was my own user home folder compressed into a sparse bundle by File Vault. (Yikes!) I tried to return it to my user folder but couldn't. I thought that maybe if I turned off File Vault it would work, so I tried. Instead my account logged out and I got an alarming message saying I couldn't log back onto this account due to an error.
I tried to access my account from the outside, as a root user, and saw to my shock that my home folder is now completely empty. The last I saw the sparse bundle was sitting on my desktop - where is it? Was it somehow deleted? If so, is there any way to recover it? I didn't make a backup, stupid me. I've seen other forum postings but they're not quite on point- Any help would be hugely appreciated!!!

I don't use File Vault, but have experimented with it a bit.
Are you on Tiger or Leopard? You've posted in the Leopard forum, but your signature says you're running Tiger.
The reason I ask is, I understand File Vault is handled somewhat differently on Tiger vs. Leopard; if you're really on Tiger, you might do better in the Tiger forum: http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=758
But I suspect nobody in the forums will be able to answer this one -- it's quite unusual. You're probably going to have to either make an appointment at the Genius Bar of your local Apple Store, or call AppleCare.

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Help! Empty home folder, vanished sparse bundle, and now I can't log in -

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