Brilliant timing....really...

Calling any and all Macintosh nerds:
Please Please Please help me! My computer is sick, I think. Last night it freaked out and did the swirly "please wait" thing and wouldn't stop. So everything was force quit and then the thing wouldn't come back on! Blue Screen of Death as I named it was my predictament last night. At that point I was freakin out because the eight pages of the 11 page paper I am supposed to finish which I had spent ALL day reasearching and writing was on my computer. Luckily, thanks to the Apple website, I figured out how to start it up in safe mode and got my paper onto my flash drive. The best piece of advice I received at that point was "Let it take a nap. You are tired. It probably is too." So I shut it off for the night and woke up today and it is sort of working. It's on but I'm very afraid the whole thing is going to shut down at any moment. I'm thinking it is possibly some bug in Microsoft Word. I have a relatively old version of it and I think that that might be it.... The problem is that I MUST have Microsoft Word in order to pass school and graduate and I cannot afford to purchase a new copy. This is an issue.

So is this my problem? And how do I fix it? Please, someone help me!!!!!!
Oh and I was gonna take it to the Genius Bar but it's Saturday and it's crazy crowded there on Saturdays and it's not like I don't have anything I'm supposed to be doing... UGH