How to restore a single deleted post without restoring everything

Hello,

I’m running WP 2.8.2. I just noticed that an old post (2005) was somehow deleted. Normally I wouldn’t worry too much, but in this case it’s a post I put a lot of time into that also has a high google ranking on the topic.

Now, I have a backup from just a couple months ago. So I have the post and the comments, but I can’t restore everything as I’d lose all the stuff added since the backup was made.

I was able to pull the text from the backup file by hand and create a new version of the post. However, I’ve obviously lost all my comments and Google’s search index no longer links to the right post.

So my question is…How can I restore this one post? Ideally, I’d like to restore the post and all comments. Is there a way to do it from the backend of my site by going into MySQL? Anyone know what to do?

Failing a complete restoration of the post (comments and all), I’d like to at least change the id of the re-created post to match the one that Google has in its search rankings. Can this be done?

Thanks in advance for your help.

John