Hmm! The block explorer shows that I have the Dimes still left in the wallet but I can't see them in the actual QT! It gives the error: warning: error reading wallet.dat! All keys read correctly, but transaction data or address book entries might be missing or incorrect when I launch it.
The wallet contains all your private keys, as long as they are there then you didn't lose any coins.
Since the error message says all keys are read correctly then the coins are still safe. You need to extract the private keys from the current wallet and then import them back into a fresh new wallet.
It gets a little bit complicated to explain it here. But as long as your private keys are not lost the coins are still safe.
You can extract the keys manually, or you can use a tool called pywallet to help you. Here are some instructions that may help you, but you need a bit of technical knowledge to do this:
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/9127/dumping-private-keys-from-wallet-dat-from-command-line-pywallet-py-alternatives