Professor Vitkus’ companions recalled the most memorable moments: from the night of January 13 until Sabonis was on his feet.

The doctor is a microsurgeon, now also a politician Juozas Olekas says that K. Vitkus was very loved by his colleagues and by all the patients. It is about a man who, according to J. Olekas, opened a new book in the history of Lithuanian medicine. K. Vitkus himself wrote this book and taught others.

“He was very receptive to innovation, he turned on the people around him with curiosity, he helped people. Kęstutis was a great scholar, interested in the culture, the history of Lithuania and knowing the world. He knew how to empathize with everyone, and many of his colleagues and patients even became family friends. He was concerned not only with physical pain, but also with the psychological state of the man. During the years that we sat on the operating table, bent over microscopes, we were bound by lots of warm filaments. I was also the godfather of his son, “said J. Olekas.

The interlocutor recalled that K. Vitkus always greeted him with a smile when he arrived to the guests.

The surgeon performed more than a dozen unique surgeries, rescuing people from paralysis, especially, according to J. Olek, after injuries, oncological diseases. At the height of her profession, she moved into the field of beauty, plastic surgery, and there she brought joy to her patients.

“He will be greatly missed, and those who have worked with him will always remember him as a great light that illuminated the lives of many patients and co-workers with the most beautiful colors,” said Olekas.

Another colleague, doctor of plastic and reconstructive surgery dr. Vytautas Tutkus says that his teacher, Professor K. Vitkus, was a person who can be counted and counted. According to him, it was K. Vitkus who started the whole era of microsurgery, because no one in Lithuania had done it before.

“Vitkus’s father was a manager, an idea generator, an authority. And Kęstutis, his son, was like a motorcyclist. The entire team of our microsurgeons gathered around him. Almost all of us were partners. As a result, all of our problems, joys were together and interests were similar. The Vitkai family has formed such a good nucleus, without intrigue or anger. We worked and enjoyed what we were doing, “said Dr. V. Research.

According to the interlocutor, K. Vitkus was his main support. He is remembered as a source of inexhaustible strength: “He performed the largest operations every day, after 10 hours in the operating room. The next day he was alert again. It was a true example of resistance. “

The interlocutor remembers the colleague as always in a good mood and smiling. V. Tutkus says that during difficult operations, he sometimes needed outside help and advice, in which case he called K. Vitkus, and he always came to help, even in the middle of the night.

“While I had to ask him for help, he never refused to help. It is difficult to find leaders like that now,” said V. Tutkus.

The comrade emphasizes that, as a surgeon, K. Vitkus had a gift from God. It was enough for him to read about the latest operations and for a while he performed them himself so perfectly, as if it were not the first time.

“As a friend, he was an extremely warm person. You were always a welcome guest in his house, he loved to communicate. He had a very good style of clothing, perhaps his wife contributed to that as well. Always uptight, dressed in fashion. They wore a frog. Then he infected us, our colleague Juozas Olekas also started using a frog. A person who radiates positive energy, “said V. Tutkus.

Renaldas Vaičiūnas, a well known expert in reconstructive plastic surgery, has been working shoulder to shoulder with Professor K. Vitkus for a long time. For some time the professor was his supervisor. Even after many years, R. Vaičiūnas was used to calling a senior colleague “chef”, although he no longer worked together, he already had his own subordinates, and with K. Vitkus they were just good friends.

Dr. R. Vaičiūnas was one of the first to learn early Monday morning that the professor had suddenly fallen in the shower. He says he is still struggling to recover from this message: “I am not sensitive. My boss and I were not among the sensitive ones, but I find it difficult to talk about it. It was very unexpected.”

He has many memories with Professor K. Vitkus, from dramatic to funny.

“My memories are such that it is fun to remember, I am ashamed to tell,” R. Vaičiūnas smiled.

He started working with K. Vitkus in 1983.

“At the time I was a leading surgeon with extensive experience in reconstructive surgery. I had just returned from the army where I was working as a military doctor, because in 1982 I graduated from the Kaunas Medical Institute, I worked for several years and the Russians “packed” me into the army in Afghanistan, where there was a shortage of doctors, “the doctor recalled.

At the same time, the doctors worked on a memorable night on January 13.

“Kęstas was a great patriot. We agreed: if someone did, we would not play great heroes, and in the hospital we would do our best. It so happened that this hospital was like the main point where we transported the wounded. So no one spared any effort: they worked, operated and helped as much as they could.

So all of the microsurgery was a combination of trauma treatment and that knowledge of ours was helpful. The boss worked all night, it didn’t take a second, “said R. Vaičiūnas.

The Achilles tendon operation performed for the basketball legend was also memorable. In 1987, during a training camp for the Soviet national team, the 22-year-old athlete was missing an Achilles tendon. Professor K. Vitkus and his father, Associate Professor Mečislovas Vitkus, were commissioned to carry out the complex operation. The team also included Drs J. Olekas and R. Vaičiūnas.

The operation was extremely difficult, but successful. Unfortunately, it was only after 3 months that the operation had to be repeated, because A. Sabonis, who was in rehabilitation, climbed the stairs and slipped. This time, not only the tendon was ruptured, but other tissues as well.

The second operation was even more complicated than the first. Luckily, he also succeeded and the basketball player was able to continue playing sports. It is interesting that after the operations, the surgeon and the basketball player remained friends, and K. Vitkus even attended the wedding of A. Sabonis.

R. Vaičiūnas recalls how proud everyone was when A. Sabonis was entrusted with the operation of Professor K. Vitkus’s team: “It was a terrible event at the time.”

For the tall basketball player to fit in, it was necessary to connect the two hospital beds, other organizational concerns were not lacking.

“I remember seeing a fax machine for the first time in my life at that time; it was taken out of the Central Committee, built in the operating room, because the Union team. Sent schemes decorated with pens: how to operate, how to sew.

We already had a different culture and the very principle of surgery, that without thread time, the thread is only to bring the tissues closer together. And there, everything is old-fashioned: there must be a thread as strong as possible to hold. How Kęst “kicked” them. By then he had returned from his practices in the United States, where there was a completely different approach, a completely different tissue treatment. This is how he taught us: to operate smoothly without injuring yourself.

It was surely an example that was always fun to be around. He took his work seriously, but at the same time he knew how to create an atmosphere that was fun for everyone; could joke. Somehow I knew how to make it so that everyone wanted to work on their own, ”said Dr. R. Vaičiūnas.

He, like other interlocutors of Delfi, responded very warmly about his outgoing colleague: “He was an incredibly warm man, although fate did not spare him blows, but there was always that smile, his intelligence was innate. I didn’t hear him scold anyone. I saw him a couple of times upset, but even that in itself, it seems, swallowed everything, gave instructions and everything. Fain was a man. But you start to appreciate it when you lose. “

K. Vitkus received the National Award for the Establishment of the Plastic and Reconstruction Service, the star of the Lithuanian National Olympic Committee, the Medal of the Lithuanian Biathlon Federation “For Merits to the Lithuanian Biathlon”, the Department of Physical Culture and Sports of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania for Sport ”(2012), First Degree Award from the Municipality of Vilnius City“ For the merits of Vilnius and the Nation ”(2015)