Drupal Help - converting exposed text field to dropdown - getting content type field values

I am creating a website in drupal and have created a page in views to filter content. Most of my exposed filter fields which are dropdowns when creating the content type are displayed as text fields when exposed on a page.
I managed to created a small module and use hook_form_alter() to convert my text field to a dropdown. The only issue now is how do i load the CCK field values?
I have looked everywhere and it seems that the only way is to load a node to get all the CCK field options but I cant do this because the page it sits does not have these options.
Any help appreciated.

UPDATED: Sorry, I should have chosen to expose the selection that says "Allowed Values" and then it will display as a dropdown.