A brave Gomersal youngster who has undergone 13 operations on her skull is to undergo her biggest yet - with seven-hour surgery at Liverpool's Alder Hey Hospital.

Little Lindsey Ackroyd, aged nine, was born weighing 4lb 9oz and with a skull deformity known as craniosynotosis, which is a premature fusion of the skull bones. Four months later and weighing just eight and a half pounds, Lindsey underwent her first operation.

Her mum Katharine, of Quarry Road in Gomersal, explained: "When Lindsey was born, her skull was fused like a ten-year-old and this caused a lot of pressure on her brain. Her first major operation was to undo her skull to allow the brain to grow. At that time, she was the smallest baby to have survived the operation."

Since then, Lindsey has undergone a further 12 operations and will have another in September to fuse the skull again. "Lindsey has really been through it," said Katharine, 39. "The original prognosis said she wouldn't do anything at all but lay and stare at the ceiling. But with music and massage she has come out of herself and is a happy little girl, opened up like a precious flower."

Lindsey, who lives with her parents and two sisters Suzanne, 13, and Nicola, ten, is in her third year at Highfields School in Huddersfield, where she receives occupational therapy and physiotherapy.

Through her experience of using massage with Lindsey, former musician Katharine has taken it up as a career and also teaches aromotherapy at Dewsbury College. "When Lindsey was first in intensive care in hospital, I would massage her and could see her blood pressure falling and heart rate relaxing on the monitors and I thought this is really calming her down.''

The family are now hoping to visit Disneyland in Florida, to let Lindsey swim with dolphins in the hope that she will learn to speak. This is costing £5,000 and the family are raising money through a massage event at R M Grylls Middle School in Hightown, Liversedge, between 10am and 5pm today, where people can pay for a massage from qualified staff.