SD card internal storage - photos not showing in Photos - how do I format/unmount safely to not lose WhatsApp history?

The storage on my Android 11 phone (Fairphone 3) was running out so I mounted a Lexar micro SD card to increase storage. I now realise this was a mistake but not knowing any better I formatted it as internal storage as that is essentially what I needed. Now any photos I take will not show up in Gallery, Photos or Drive and neither can I see them on the SD card - so they're essentially not being taken. Taking a picture within Whatsapp is possible but then impossible to send because the file format isn't "valid". (And when I manually eject the card, the camera won't work at all.) I've come as far as thinking I need to format the SD card to portable to fix this? Essentially I want to undo ever putting it in there, I'd rather take low storage. BUT while there are no major picture or document files on the card, I noticed the WhatsApp Databases and Backup files and I'm worried that formatting will wipe my WhatsApp account. It's also backing up to Drive but when I try and do a manual back-up without the SD card in (thinking I can then uninstal/reinstal Whatsapp and load the most recent Drive backup after formatting + losing the SD storage) it tells me "Backup skipped because internal storage not available". So could someone please confirm: - Do I need to FORMAT my SD card to fix the Photos issue? - Will I lose my WhatsApp chats if I format because it deletes the Databases? - If so, is the only way to save it to secure a Drive backup, format the SD card, then uninstal/reinstal WhatsApp and load the Drive backup? Thanks!! TL;DR how do I get out of an internal formatted SD storage situation without losing my WhatsApp history?