Final update:
 

Yesterday afternoon we ran spybot. We had already done
Avast twice, Malwarebytes twice and Adaware once.

1)Spybot found 7 items of modest danger. We removed them.

Then later in the evening we tried FB again...and it was back to normal!

2)Both laptop and this one had auto downloads for Mozilla 3.6.12
before we checked FB again. So we don't know if this download fixed it either.

3)Or, FB fixed it? Whichever did it, now it is working normally...
we can see other pages on each file and the links are back for uploading.

It is very difficult to find help on FB...IMO. You will want to check the "bugs and problems" section in the confusing lists for help, if you have missing icons or other navigation issues. Much of the help offered there is strange and has no solution IMO.
They obviously don't want people bothering them, since they are so huge!