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RBG Says She's Back To Doing Her Full Workout Routine, So You Can Take A Deep Breath

by Monica Hunter-Hart
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You can all take a deep breath: Ruth Bader Ginsburg says her rib fractures are nearly healed and that she's already returned to doing her full workout routine. In a public interview sponsored by the Museum of the City of New York and WNET-TV on Saturday, the justice told the audience that she was "almost repaired."

Ginsburg was hospitalized after falling down in her Supreme Court office on Nov. 7 and turned out to have three fractured ribs — an injury that she's suffered before on a smaller scale. Some fans of the justice went into panic mode, and many joked on social media that they'd be glad to donate their own ribs to her.

But they didn't need to worry. Ginsburg quickly went back to work; her nephew told Reuters that she was conducting Supreme Court business from her hospital bed. Now it's clear that she also apparently went right back to her regular workouts.

In her Saturday interview, the justice told NPR's Nina Totenberg that she began working with her physical trainer again "immediately" after the injury, though they'd done "legs only." But now she's fully back on schedule: "Yesterday was my first day doing my whole workout routine," she added.

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In addition to multiple bouts with fractured ribs, Ginsburg has had cancer twice, in 1999 and 2011. In 2014, she experienced a blockage in one of her arteries that forced her to have a stent inserted. But despite the health scares, Ginsburg appears confident that she'll remain on the court for some time. In August, she declared that she hopes to continue for "at least five more years." She's also appointed law clerks through the year 2020.

Totenberg asked Ginsburg about a range of other topics in the interview, from her years living in New York to the sex scene in On the Basis of Sex, a biopic about the justice that's coming out later this month. As for that: "What I thought of it is that Marty would have loved it," Ginsburg said, referring to her husband, who died in 2010.

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The justice also said that she still considers herself a New York native. She was born in Brooklyn in 1933, though she's spent much of the past 38 years in Washington D.C. (she was appointed to a D.C. federal court in 1980 before joining the Supreme Court). Still, she said on Saturday that those years haven't changed her perception of herself as "not only a New Yorker, but a Brooklynite." She added that there's a lot she misses about New York City, including the Metropolitan Opera, which she said has "no rival in the world."

Speaking about the other justices on the Supreme Court, Ginsburg noted that "we all respect and even genuinely like each other." She called the court "the most collegial institute in town."

Ginsburg's conversation with Totenberg took place in a sold-out New York Academy of Medicine. It will be broadcast on public television starting on Jan. 2, according to the Associated Press.