Its my work email as well, but life wont end. I'm actually getting other things done. I have contacted my regular customers by gmail, and catching up on some other stuff. I have had this email since it was called iTools. I think it went down once before when it was MobileMe, but just for a few hours.
To say Apple is unreliable is way over the line. iTools started in 2000 and always worked, then when it became MobileMe in 2008, I had one outage. I do miss iDisk however. I don't think Apple can tell you anymore than it has already. I know when I have a production problem, people want to know, but sometimes, I am trying to find out what the heck the problem is. A couple of days does seem like a long time in this day and age, but I think we will get through it. My parents managed as kids in a bomb shelter in London during the war, so I think we can put this in perspective. It's just email, and you can still contact people using other mail clients. Hang in there!