Word 2003 document very slow

Hi everyone,
I'm at the end of my rope with this thing. I've got a simple 45 page document that has a 1 or so embedded images per page (PNG files all totaling less than 4mb). The document grew to a ridiculous 126mb. I turned on the "image placeholder" option, but even with that it takes 30 seconds or so to scroll down a single page or to select text, type, etc... My PC is a new dual core pentium 2Ghz system with 4gb of DDR2 ram running windows XP sp2 and office pro 2k3 sp3. The document was originally created on this same computer, same office install.

Following a MS knowledge base I found, I copied the contents (minus the last paragraph mark) into a new document. This reduced the filesize to 54mb, but it still takes forever to do anything. If I try to view header/footers it takes over a minute.

Any ideas how to fix this? This *should* be a small document.

Other information about the document:

* Each image (maybe 50 images) has a "figure" caption and a cross reference link. At the end of the document I have a table of figures.
* I use custom styles
* The document uses 2 section breaks, 1 after the title and 1 after the TOC.
* The document body has a header/footer while the first two sections don't.


Any help is appreciated. If need be I can send the doc to anyone who can help.

Thanks!