BRAVE tot Lydia Cross will be given a hero's welcome back home in Chippenham on Boxing Day as she and her family struggle to come to terms with her losing both her legs below the knee.

Tony and Jody Cross have had to endure watching both their young daughters suffer from the most severe form of meningitis.

The Gazette and Herald believes its readers will want to help little Lydia and her family and today we are launching an appeal to raise money to safeguard her future.

Her parents want her to eventually have the same sort of advanced artificial limbs that have helped Heather Mills McCartney.

Our appeal will also help buy any aids that can help her immediately. The family now wants to know why doctors failed to diagnose Lydia's condition, despite her baby sister having just spent time in intensive care with the same symptoms.

Mr Cross said: "We have already had a call from a businessman in London, who has kindly offered us a family holiday to wherever we want to go which is amazing and it would be wonderful to receive any help Gazette readers would like to give."

Neighbours are also to do their bit to raise the family's spirits by putting out the bunting to welcome Lydia home.

Mrs Cross, 33, of Chippenham, has told how her family's world was first turned upside down on October 24, when baby Millie Grace, nine months, first started showing alarming symptoms of meningitis.

She took the baby to Chippenham Hospital's casualty department, but doctors sent them home and told them to give her Calpol.

But the baby's condition worsened dramatically and eventually she ended up in Bath Royal United Hospital's intensive care unit, with failing internal organs.

In the coming two weeks, Millie's terrified parents spent time in the intensive care unit in Cardiff and then back in Bath, but despite being given only a five per cent chance of survival, she stunned doctors by recovering.

On the same night they took Millie home, their two-year-old daughter Lydia developed a soaring temperature. Frantic, her parents took her to their local health centre and on to see doctors at Chippenham Hospital, but she was sent home.

Thirty-six hours later, with Lydia running a temperature of 41.5 degrees, suffering sickness and hallucinations, her parents again rang doctors, but were told not to worry.

"Tony spent that night by her side. She was being sick and we were so worried about her," said Mrs Cross. In the morning, we rang again but were told to just give her fluids."

That evening, a nurse arranged for an ambulance to take her to Bath.

She was on life support for 12 days, then suffered renal failure and went on to dialysis. Her toes turned black and two weeks ago the parents were told Lydia needed to have her legs amputated below the knee.

Mrs Cross said: "We sat with her and told her she had poorly legs and that they were going to be taken away. I've tried so hard not to cry."