As Ruth Bader Ginsburg continues to recover from surgery in a New York hospital, her many supporters have rushed to wish her good health.

On Friday it was announced that the 85-year-old, who is a leading liberal light of the US supreme court, had two malignant growths removed from her left lung, in her second hospital stay in two months. It was her third cancer treatment.

Ginsburg’s health has been closely watched in the two years since Donald Trump took office. The Republican president has already had two supreme court picks, swaying the court’s balance toward conservatives. A third would cement the conservative advantage for decades.

On social media on Friday and Saturday, Ginsburg’s fans called for a “prayer circle”, cheered as she voted from her hospital bed to strike down Trump’s attempt to stop migrants seeking asylum, and cited her most famous decisions.

“Is it possible for me to donate all of my body parts to RBG?” asked the comedian Kathy Griffin.

Ginsburg is the oldest justice but she has always bounced back from health scares. Her daily routines, and especially her workout regimen, have become the subject of popular fascination.

You’re in our prayers RBG! pic.twitter.com/ZyzplFeIAp — Herbie B (@hshorty55) December 22, 2018

Weeks after cracking three ribs in a fall at the court in November, she asked questions during arguments, spoke at a naturalization ceremony for new citizens and was interviewed at screenings of a new movie about her early life, On the Basis of Sex.

On Friday the court said Ginsburg would remain in the hospital for a few days. In more than 25 years, she has never missed arguments. The court next meets on 7 January.

RBG fighting cancer and Trumpism simultaneously. https://t.co/wV3QxisrBt — Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) December 21, 2018

This is the second time Ginsburg has received a cancer diagnosis during unrelated medical tests. The lung nodules were found during X-rays and other tests after her fall in November.

In 2009, a follow-up screening 10 years after a colorectal cancer diagnosis found a lesion on Ginsburg’s pancreas. Doctors removed the growth, plus a smaller one not seen before. The larger growth was benign, the smaller one malignant.

Dr John Lazar, director of thoracic robotic surgery at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, said it was not uncommon to see slow-growing lung cancers in women in their 80s. Such patients tend to respond well to surgery and go on to die of something unrelated, he said.

“If she doesn’t need anything but the surgery, it is a very good sign,” Lazar said.

Ginsburg also broke two ribs in a fall in 2012 and had a stent implanted to open a blocked artery in 2014. In 2009, she was hospitalized after a bad reaction to medicine.

Appointed by Bill Clinton in 1993, Ginsburg has rebuffed suggestions from some liberals that she should have stepped down in the first two years of Barack Obama’s second term, when Democrats controlled the Senate and would have been likely to confirm her successor.

She has hired clerks for the term that extends into 2020, indicating she has no plans now to retire.

On Friday night, Trump tweeted his own best wishes.