Kate,
I have a MacBookPro Retina running Mavericks and ALL my legacy data came across correctly when I did my migration....yours will too once you get it properly sorted. I did have an initial issue with my email, but it sorted easily once I looked up the issue and applied the fix (which happened last November, so I'm not remembering the specifics....).
My advice would be to make a day of it and take a combined holiday/working trip to go get some one-on-one time at the Apple store so that you are all fixed. Give yourself a special treat as well after making the trip and have some "me time" for yourself while in the larger metropolitan area. You won't be disappointed.
FWIW, your model of MBP can NOT go backward to an earlier OS because it has hardware (Retina) newer than 10.8 can support.
Additionally, if you haven't done it just yet, you should download and install the latest 10.9.3 Combo update for your Retina and see if that might help.....it can be found
HERE....
Let us know....
