HELP ME. deleted text. need to recover.

[hannah mcvittie]

i'm writting my dissertation, wrote a pretty lengthy paragraph since my last save, then my cat stood on the keyboard, i don't know what buttons he pressed but when i came back after throwing him out of the house, my paragraph has gone missing. i have tried pressing the undo button but all is comes back with is random letters out of context. in the drop down of the undo button it comes up 'undo typing $2' i never typed that nor does it appear anywhere in my document, does that mean anything. please help me, i don't want to have to start again.