Template Headaches (PHP includes & links getting rewritten)

["glockops" <webforumsuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I know this has been discussed a few times on these forums, but I've yet to 
find a solution.
 I have several DW Templates that make use of PHP includes - some are relative 
('includes/navigation.inc.php') some are absolute paths 
('/home/smwc/public_html/includes/footer.inc.php').  Whenever a Contribute user 
saves a draft or sends a page for review these includes (which are OUTSIDE an 
editable region) get rewritten into relative paths.
 For example:
 The draft will get saved in domain.com/MMWIP/randomstring/randomstring.php
 Code before the draft is saved will be:
 <?php include('/home/smwc/public_html/includes/breadcrumb.inc.php'); ?>
 Code after the draft is published will be:
 <?php include('../../home/smwc/public_html/includes/breadcrumb.inc.php'); ?>
 Obviously, that breaks everything.

 It is also doing this to all absolute paths.  Stylesheets go from 
src="/scripts/css/style.css" to src="../../scripts/css/style.css"; even the 
Template line gets changed to this <!-- InstanceBegin 
template="../../Templates/Index-Page.dwt.php" codeOutsideHTMLIsLocked="false" 
-->

 Path links defined in the template (/about/index.php) get changed to 
../about/index.php and so on..  
 I was a few weeks from a website launch... * sobs *
 Can anyone help with this?