It could be, and is part of the reason why hypothyroid patients are usually just put on thyroxine (T4), as it has a half life of about a week I think. (Look it up yourself
A hypothyroid patient on T4 can forget his dose a couple of days and it doesn't matter much, but if treated with triodothyronine/T3 only I think that would be very noticable.
I tend to think the best treatment is with both T4 and T3 in some cases, but that's another topic.
I'm not sure about the recovery issue, just overheard someone say recovery from T4 was a bitch compared to T3.
Maybe some others can chime in on this.