iPhoto not opening

Yesterday I was adding new photos onto iPhoto but half way through my laptop (Mac OS X Version 10.6.8) half the photos went on and the rest were left on my camera. Then I deleted unwanted things from my desktop, deleted over 200 photos in the iPhoto library and then cleared the trash. I quit iPhoto and a few minutes later went to open it again but this time it would not open and a message came up saying "Your photo library is either in use by another application or has become unreadable" followed by instructions on what to do. I followed them instructions by pressing the option and command keys and tried every option that popped up but nothing worked and another message popped up saying "Your photo library is damaged or unreadable and cannot be opened. Please restore from a backup." The real problem is I don't think I have a backup, I never got around to put it on a disk. I really cannot lose all of my photos. I would really appreciate some help, Thank you very much.

My photos are still there because when I go onto iTunes and connect my iPhone I can load the pictures onto my phone.