It may not be hopeless. There are a variety of utilities like Card Recovery that might help.
http://www.cardrecoverypro.com/?gclid=CPrkzajv9LwCFQHNOgodkC8AcQ
WRITE NOTHING to the card---that may make files unrecoverable if you had any chance. Take it out of the machine.
--Also, for future reference, whether using internal or external storage, there are a lot of apps these days that will back your stuff up on the schedule you want. Facebook has an auto-upload feature for cameras for instance. Once you establish a wi-fi connection, it is pretty automatic and covers your ****. If you don't like Facebook, Google+ will do that as well. You only have to be a member of either and accept the photo upload feature when installing the Android App. Since they both do it automatically whenever something is newly shot, it is hard to ever lose much no matter what. This is a really great solution for security. Other programs like Lookout are great, too, but you need to set the schedule there. More interesting is Seagate...if you have a Seagate Drive and Backup Plus Dashboard that comes with it, will let you backup photos (or what you choose to backup) on whatever schedule you set it to when you have wi-fi. If at home, it will backup to your external Seagate hard drive. If not, it can backup to a standard cloud location like Google Drive or SkyDrive or DropBox. Both Lookout and Seagate Mobile Backup will handle other things besides photos, too. Great little app, but you have to have Seagate Backup Plus to use it, and that means you have to have a Seagate drive, too.
In any case Fb and G+ pretty much make this ***** proof for free when it comes to photos.
In every case I hear of like this I ask: did you originally format the card in the device? Those who load from a computer seem to have many more problems.