Sharepoint doing an automatic discard checkout - losing changes!

Question

Scenario:

1. Through web interface, I check out and edit a file.

2. I exit my (non-office) application. My application asks if I wish to check in, and I reply no. Document with my changes remains checked out, present in my SharePoint Drafts folder, and present in the registry under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\Common\Offline\Files

3. I go back to the web interface, click the name of the file, am prompted to view the file. I click "OK" and, to my horror, an automatic discard of the checkout is performed: a. Registry entry deleted b. File (WITH MY PRECIOUS CHANGES) is unceremoniously deleted

What I would have hoped is that a redirect would have happened to launch my application with the modified draft in the SharePoint Drafts folder.

Does anyone know how to get SharePoint to perform this?

UPDATE: I discovered that if I upload the file (without checking it in) through SharePoint web services, SharePoint no longer performs this "discard checkout" at the next read attempt by the same user.