Aaaw thanks for all the help and suggestions, everyone. Thanks for the links and ebay suggestion for replacement styli as well. Trust me after this scare, I searched in the forums about them.

After reading up on them a bit, I realized I may already have an emergency backup. Won't know for sure until I test it later, but the pen for my daughters' manga drawing tablet program may actually work. Yay me

. So once again, I'd like to say a great big thanks for everyone's help, suggestions, and highly useful information made available to me by the members of this forum. I think you are all fantaberrific