The Communists in East Germany couldn't stop Bernd Ebert, but two years ago a medical condition almost did.

Ebert, who with his wife Regina fled East Berlin as the East German government was building the Berlin Wall, eventually found his way to Charlotte and then to Tega Cay. Two years ago he found himself in the ICU at CMC-Pineville, N.C., paralyzed and unable to swallow.

He'd been struck down with Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

"I'm still climbing out of it," Ebert said.

He's up and walking around again, but it was not an easy process. He spent four weeks in the ICU. Doctors pumped five units of blood plasma into him over the course of eight days to replace his own blood which had been tainted by the disease; GBS causes the immune system to attack the nervous system.

Following the transfusions, Ebert spent another two months with a feeding tube down his throat and at one point came down with a pneumonia.

"A lot of people that have it die," his wife Regina Ebert said.

Bernd Ebert feels lucky to be alive, let alone well enough to walk on his own again.

"You have to start moving your fingers again, then your legs and arms," he said. "It took me nearly six months to get there."

Though not fully recovered, Ebert is more active than ever now. As soon as he was able to move again he became an elder in his church.

He joined the Fort Mill Rotary Club. And he became a volunteer for the Tega Cay Fire Department, working on the computers around the station.

He also volunteers some of his time at the rehab hospital in Pineville, N.C.

"They bent over backwards to help me," he said of the rehab center.

He's been using his connections at Rotary to drum up support for GBS fundraisers such as the Miracle Mile walk held last Saturday in Charlotte.

"It's called that because that's what people are striving for, to be able to walk that first mile again," Ebert said.

But more than his own will and determination to recover, Ebert credits the prayers, those of his family and of his congregations, with pulling him through.