This went fine, but i already did a lot of work to them and now all that work is gone. I had assumed doing this inside CO would mean it would keep track of the adjustments. I've tried to undo but i guess i noticed it too late, or it is impossible, because it didn't work. There are a handful of images that still have the adjustments, seemingly ones that have had a variant copy at some point.
So what do i do !? Any ideas would be appreciated.

It's difficult to rename them back because photos have been deleted so the order is broken, and i have tried it manually with the first file but it didn't seem to work anyway.
I have also attempted to open a catalog backup, rename an image to what it was, and it finds the old reference of course, but again without adjustments except for a copyright notice in the metadata.