Exclude a not-hidden field in the content
The field shouldn't be removed from the $node object...if it is then I'd check what custom/contrib modules you have installed that might be causing this to happen. It's not supposed to.

A sure-fire way to make sure all fields are attached to the object is to re-load it:

$node = node_load($node-&gt;nid, NULL, TRUE);


That will re-load the $node fresh from the database, with all fields attached. You do take a performance hit doing this. However, Drupal core will never have removed the field from the $node object in the first place, so if you've got some other theme/module that's doing this you'll either have to find/repair/remove it, or use a more a extreme method like the one above.