My card reader doesn't show up at all, but previously did in 10.10
Solution 1:
It's a hardware error, either the device is broken or the connector has come out from inside your computer.
When the device doesn't appear in lsusb then you're in serious trouble because that means the most basic detection has failed and it's rarely a software issue. To double check that it's not a software issue use a liveCD and boot from that, test if it works there.